State registration of rights to real estate: current issues of theory

The article is devoted to solving the scientific and practical problem of clarifying the legal nature and significance of state registration of rights to real estate in the context of the changes that occurred in 2013, marking the transition from the deed (American and post-Soviet) to a mixed system with a vector to the title system, initiated by the Prime Minister of Australia Robert Torrens in 1857. It was found that the mixed system does not provide for the state’s responsibility for the correctness of the information entered into the register, despite the establishment of requirements and procedures for verifying the grounds and accuracy of the information entered into the register. It was determined that in legal science there is currently no established approach to the legal understanding of the legal nature, characteristics, features and meanings of state registration of rights to real estate as a phenomenon of legal reality. It is proven that most of the definitions and characteristics of scientists reflect their orientation to research in the field of either public or private law, limiting their systematicity from the point of view of the dialectical method of scientific knowledge, which requires clarification of the nature of various phenomena of legal reality in their interconnection and interdependence. Thus, the orientation to resolving the issue of the legal characteristics of state registration of rights to real estate exclusively from the public-law segment removes from the clarification of issues of private interest of persons who are participants in civil legal relations in which the transfer of ownership took place on the basis of a transaction concluded by them, and therefore, from defining it as a legal fact that has independent legal significance. It is proven that the procedure for state registration of rights to real estate is regulated by law, is a legal act of a public authority, aimed at the state performing a law enforcement function. The final stage of the registration procedure is the entry of information about real rights and their encumbrances into the register. It is concluded that state registration has a legal confirmation, not a legal establishment, character, despite the fact that according to Part 2 of Article 3 of the Law of Ukraine «On State Registration of Property Rights to Real Estate and Their Encumbrances», the moment of the emergence of rights to real estate is determined by the moment of such registration. In other words, we are talking about the moment of legitimization of those factual relations that arose on the basis of a legal fact, which is a transaction aimed at the transfer of ownership rights to subjects of private relations. Therefore, a legal fact in a legal structure that has legal establishment value should still be defined as a transaction between the owner and the acquirer of real estate rights, which has a private law nature and positive content, while state registration itself is considered to be a legal confirmation.