The Effects of the Law on Mandatory Official Registration of Immovable Property Transactions on the System of Evidence and the Admissibility of Property Claims

Abstract

The Law on Mandatory Official Registration of Immovable Property Transactions constitutes one of the most significant recent legislative developments at the intersection of registration law, contract law, and civil procedure. By linking judicial protection of certain legal acts to official registration, the law has altered the legal position of ordinary and official documents as well as the procedural treatment of property disputes. Using a descriptive-analytical method, this study examines the effects of the law on the system of evidence and the admissibility of property claims. The findings indicate that the principal transformation introduced by the new law is not limited to strengthening the evidentiary status of official documents. In cases falling within its scope, courts must first determine whether the claim is admissible and whether judicial effect may be given to an unregistered legal act before examining the merits of the dispute. Accordingly, a clear distinction must be maintained among the validity of the transaction, validity of the document, opposability, evidentiary value, and admissibility of the claim, and non-registration should not automatically be equated with substantive nullity in every case. The effects of the law also vary across different property claims, including actions for proof of ownership, compulsory execution of an official deed, annulment of an official deed, recovery of possession, eviction, restitution of counter-performance, and damages. In each case, the legal source of the asserted right and the judicial effect sought must be independently assessed. Article 10 also provides an important transitional mechanism for recording earlier informal claims and protecting third parties. Overall, proper application of the law requires a restrictive interpretation of inadmissibility, careful attention to the temporal and substantive scope of the law, and avoidance of extending its restrictions to disputes that do not depend on recognition of an unregistered legal act.