Preventive control of legality
1. Do Land Registrars or Land Registries carry out a legal scrutiny or assessment of the documents or applications submitted or (conversely) are registered without a previous examination?
Under Greek law, Land Registrars conduct a legal control of the documents submitted prior to their registration.
2. What does the object of the LR assessment consist of? Are the documents presented and the content of the registration books or land books (or any other books or lists of your LR organisation) the only elements that land registrars bear in mind for carrying out their assessment and then to accept registration or not? What is the situation in your LR system?
In order to give an accurate answer to the question we must again distinguish Land Registries in two categories;
a) In LR which function without cadastral data and follow the system of transcription, the Land Registrar controls the so-called external legality of the presented deed and must reject the document only in case there is a defect for which the law expressely obliges him to deny registration (for instance, in case the document is not accompanied by a tax declaration) or in those cases that the presented deed bears a legal defect that entails absolute nulity.
b) In LR operating the new cadastral system, the law stipulates that the Land Registrar conducts a full legal control substantive legality) of the presented deed. The contol includes not only the above mentioned (under a) elements, but any legal defect (for instance, capacity of parties) and any inconsistency of the act in relation to the Land Books and the cadastral database.
In both cases, the Land Registrar examines the presented documents in relation to the content of the Land Books and is not entitled to require any other evidence.
3. Otherwise, the correct answer with respect to your LR assessment would be:
See answer 4.
4. A specific case: let’s consider an application for registration based on a document or deed with lack of legal prerequisites. What would your LR response be?
The Land Registrar shall within the frame of this capacity reject the deed by issuing a relevant fully justified act of rejection.
5. In case of rejection or abeyance of a document, does your system provide legal possibilities to request a review to the parties or stakeholders? Do they have legal possibilities of appealing the Land registers’ decision? Please, describe the procedures if applicable.
Under Greek law, the rejection act of the Land Registrar can be challenged by means of an appeal to court following a non-contentious procedure. The law does not provide for a specific deadline for the appeal.
6. Must registrars or LR offices do their assessment within deadlines? If applicable, is it mandatory for registrars in charge or is it rather a guideline?
The deadline for the Land Registrars assessment varies from 24 hours to 5 days, depending on the system under which the Land Registry operates. These deadlines are mandatory.
