Registering Property Rights of Married Persons and Registered Partners
The economic effects of marriage differ from one Member State to another. In some legal systems marriage does not carry any patrimonial consequence for the spouses, while in others once married, the spouses step into a special patrimonial regime, either it is defined by law or established by arrangements between spouses.
Although the registration of the matrimonial property regime of spouses, as such, is out of the scope of land registry in most jurisdictions, acts performed by spouses under their proper economic regime might have some kind of consequence when registering the transfer of property rights on immovable assets in the land registry.
The conflict of law rules set out in the new EU regulations identify the applicable law to the matrimonial economic regime, under the principles of unity and universality, so that law will apply to all assets of spouses, including immovable property, wherever they are located.
Registration in the land registry will be always be governed by the lex registrationis since it is outside the scope of the Regulation. However, it is of much interest to know how matrimonial economic regime interacts with land registry, especially when the applicable law is the law of a state other than the law of the forum (Lex fori).
Following the scheme of the Regulation, we could recognize three main fields of interest:
- Acts between the spouses
- Acts between the spouses (or one of them) and a third party.
- Overriding mandatory provisions in family law
The information is presented in this fact sheet in a simple manner since it only aims at giving basic understanding for the general public of how land registers deal with this complex issue,
This Fact Sheet is structured in 4 chapters:
- Registering rights derived from acts between spouses
- Registering rights derived from acts between a married person and a third party
- Land Registry and family home protective rules
- Unity of the applicable law (art 21)
- Registred Partnerships
