Legal aspects of recovery of real estate ownership documents. Part 2

This material continues our series of articles about recovery of documents which define rights.

In the first article we looked through the general matters on recovery of the real estate’s documents. In this publication we will examine specific situations of getting a duplicate.

If lost document which was issued by the State Registration Service (have been issued since the 1st of January 2013) then after submitting an advertisement to newspaper or magazine a person must call on a territorial chapter of a state body.

If an ownership certificate on a real estate is issued by the technical inventory office then you have to submit an application form there. If we talk about land plot act then an application form is submitted to a chapter of the Ukraine's State Agency of Land Resources.

If you lost an ownership document on a real estate (for example, sale agreement of a real estate) which was issued by a private notary office then you can call on a private notary office with a request of issuance its duplicate.  You need to call on the state notary archive if your document was issued by the state notary office. We have also to admit that private notary offices hand their cases there and it means that information can be got only through the archives.

In spite of the fact that a recover mechanism of getting a document is explored enough, there are situations when you are able to get a document only through courts.

We can divide two typical situations when a court decision provides an opportunity to get a necessary duplicate. Let’s look through each of them.

It is not rare situation when the sate body is liquidated and the state archive is lost or it doesn’t have necessary information. For example, a flat’s document or another document issued in the USSR and all information was transferred to the Russian Federation’s state archive. Very often it doesn’t bring any results when you call to the foreign state bodies. In this case the only opportunity is calling on courts. In a positive result you will get a court decision where your ownership right is fixed.

However, the most common situation is refusal to issue a duplicate by the new state body which is assign of the old one. For example, chapters of the Ukraine's State Agency of Land Resources often refuse applicators to issue a land plot document. In spite of explanations of the State Registration Service dated the 15th of January 2013 no. 12-06-15-13, chapters of the Ukraine's State Agency of Land Resources says that there is no legal basis of the procedure of issuance a duplicate of a land plot document. Calling on a court is effective option in this case. As a result, defendant is obliged to issue a duplicate of a land plot document.

The explanations of the State Registration Service dated the 22th of April 2014 no. 9742/05-15/14 define that the state registration of ownership right on a real estate can be conducted according to an issued duplicate but not his issuance. It means if ownership hadn’t been registered previously and if a duplicate of a sale agreement of a house, flat is issued than ownership must be registered by the State Registration Service according to a duplicate.

We remain that it is the second part of the series of articles on recovery of ownership documents. The general matters were examined in the first article.