Recognition of ownership of a house in court due to the loss of a title document

In August 2023, Andrii, a pensioner and internally displaced person from Pokrovsk district of Donetsk region, contacted a lawyer of Caritas Mariupol, a DRC partner, in Dnipro.

The man said that in May 2022, he and his family were forced to move to another region in search of safety. As it turned out later, they had left the only copy of the purchase and sale agreement for the house where they lived at home, and it, along with other belongings, burned down during the shelling. No information about the ownership of the house was entered in the State Register of Real Property Rights (SRPR).

Andriy applied to the state authorities for compensation for the destroyed house, but was denied, citing the need for documentary evidence of ownership of the house. The problem was that in order to apply for compensation for the destroyed property, the right to it must be recorded in the State Register of Rights to Property.

Appeals to the Donetsk Regional Archive and the Marinka Bureau of Technical Inventory did not yield any results, as they had no documents left. The only way to resolve the problem was to file a lawsuit with the court to recognize the property right due to the loss of the title document.

The lawyer helped prepare all the necessary documents, collected evidence for the court, and drafted a statement of claim. In addition to legal assistance, the pensioner was provided with financial assistance to pay court costs, which was also an important step in progressing the case.

At the end of November, the court upheld the claim: the man's ownership of the house was recognized, and now he has the opportunity to enter the data on the ownership of the destroyed housing in the State Register of Property Rights and receive compensation for it in the future.

The provision of free legal aid to IDPs in Dnipropetrovs'k region was made possible through the cooperation of Caritas Mariupol with the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) and funding from the European Union's civil protection and humanitarian assistance.