ARE YOU A POTENTIAL LANDOWNER OR HEIR?

#80Are you a potential landowner or heir?

The pilot project, which started on 01.01.2023, was launched by the Slovak Land Fund and has been a great success. The project in question specifically focuses on tracking the transferred ownership rights of unidentified land owners. The Slovak Land Fund plans to publish a list of unidentified landowners on its website in regular semi-annual cycles. The Fund justified its decision on the grounds of increased transparency and a genuine interest in protecting the rights of unidentified landowners. The Slovak Land Fund has also published information indicating that the list of undetected owners whose ownership right was transferred by the Slovak Land Fund in the period from 01.01.2022 - 31.12.2022 will also be published.

Act No. 180/1995 Coll. on Certain Measures for the Arrangement of Ownership of Land regulates the procedure for the renewal of the registration of certain land and legal relations to it. The subject of the proceedings under these provisions are land which is defined by ownership or tenure, and which is either incompletely registered or not registered at all. It can be stated that, for the most part, these will be situations where the registration data do not match the land registers together with the data registered in the Land Registry. Such a process, which should avoid the fragmentation of land ownership, has as its primary objective to establish the manner of acquisition of land and also the ownership rights to it.

On the basis of the legal regulation of the procedure for the renewal of the registration of certain land and the legal relations to it, a register of the renewed registration of land has been established. This register mainly, but not exclusively, records land which has a known owner but whose place of residence or registered office is not known, or records land whose owner is not known at all. In this case, the Slovak Land Fund acts as a real estate administrator, and therefore its powers include the right to give the land to the use of the users whom it assesses as suitable in the matter in question. If the owner of the land in use does not exercise his rights to the property, the remuneration for the use falls to the Slovak Land Fund.

The aforementioned list of undetected owners is divided on its website by the Slovak Land Fund, namely into seven lists of files, which are divided alphabetically by cadastral territory. Each of the lists contains the name of the cadastral area, the serial number of the cadastral area, the title deed and the name of the unknown owner. Thus, if you are in a situation where you have found your deceased ancestors in the list, you should check whether inheritance proceedings have been carried out after their death.

But how to proceed if you have found your ancestor's name in the list of unknown owners? The procedure consists of a number of steps that need to be followed to avoid any potential inconvenience. The first step is to initiate additional inheritance proceedings for your ancestors, which you will achieve by filing a petition with the competent court, although we cannot rule out the opening of more than one inheritance procedure. If we imagine such a situation in practice, it means that there may be parallel additional proceedings, for example, for your parents, but also for your grandparents. In this way, the newly discovered estate of the deceased will only be properly disposed of after the completion of the additional succession proceedings. You should enclose with the relevant petition the documents confirming that you have the title of inheritance and you should not forget the identification data, according to which the registration of the title to the land is in favour of your ancestors.