Contesting the Registration of Real Estate Rights in BRICS and the Laws of Other Countries

In doctrinal sources, a claim for the recognition of property rights constitutes a special protection method that is not commonly found in the legislation of every country and is not widespread like vindication and negatory actions. However, there has been no sufficient research on the judicial means of correcting the errors that occur during the registration of real estate rights. This article is a comparative legal study of national laws of those countries that provide for the registration of rights (titles) in real estate but not for the acts (deeds) from which the rights emerge. It is commonly held that claims for the recognition of property rights are known only to some legal systems and are not found in the laws of several states. Our study revealed that this is not entirely true. First, claims for the recognition of property rights do exist in the laws of countries of the Romano-Germanic legal family. In several countries, they are enshrined at the legislative level; in other countries, they are formulated at the level of judicial practice and recognized in legal doctrine; while in some countries, this claim relates to contesting the registration of real estate rights. Second, there are analogs of claims for the recognition of property rights also found in common law legal systems, which operate through tort claims arising from two possible violations – conversion (appropriation) and slander of title (libel of the title). The many different methods and instruments for correcting registration errors in the laws of different countries may be described as a single type of claim – the claim for the recognition of property rights. This claim is applied when the reliability of an entry in the registry of the real estate rights is questioned or when the right of an individual entered in the registry is contested. Claims for the recognition of property rights aim to correct erroneous entries in the registry of rights to real estate when an individual considers themselves the owner of a real estate, but the real estate is registered under a different individual.