What to Do When a Client in the Dominican Republic Stops Paying: The Action for Collection of a Sum of Money A supplier invoices two million pesos to a distributor in Santo Domingo. Sixty days pass. Then ninety. The phone stops ringing on the other end. It is at that moment —not before— that most […]
The Dominican Customs Law, Explained: What Law 168-21 Means for Importers and Exporters For 68 years, Dominican foreign trade ran on a customs statute written in 1953, before container shipping, free trade agreements and electronic commerce existed. Law 168-21, in force since August 2021, replaced it with a modern code of over 400 articles. For […]
Import Regimes in the Dominican Republic: Choosing the Right Customs Treatment Under Law 168-21 Two companies import identical machinery into the Dominican Republic. One pays full duties and taxes at the port; the other pays nothing, because it declared the goods under a temporary admission regime tied to export production. The difference is not luck, […]
Stopping Counterfeits at the Border: The DGA’s IP Rights Registry in the Dominican Republic A brand owner discovers that a container of counterfeit goods bearing its trademark is about to clear Dominican customs. What can it do before the merchandise disperses into the market? Dominican law provides a border enforcement toolkit, but it works best […]
From One Building to Many Owners: Constituting the Condominium Regime in the Dominican Republic Every apartment sold in the Dominican Republic exists twice: once as concrete, and once as a legal object created by paperwork most buyers never read. A building is, by default, a single property with a single title. What converts it into […]
Gathering the Pieces of a Parcel: The Consolidation of Constancias Anotadas A great deal of Dominican land is owned in fractions of somebody else’s parcel. The constancia anotada, the document evidencing rights over an undetermined portion of a parcel, without its own individualized survey, is the legacy of decades of informal subdivision: parents distributing land […]
Buying the Loan, Not the Property: Registering an Assignment of Credit in the Dominican Republic There is a second market beneath the Dominican property market: the market for the debts secured by it. Banks sell loan portfolios, investors buy distressed credits at a discount, private lenders exit positions, and estates liquidate the mortgage credits a […]
“I Lost My Title”, What Losing the Title Duplicate Means in the Dominican Republic, and What to Do Today It is one of the most frequent calls a Dominican real estate lawyer receives, and it always carries the same undertone of panic: the title is gone. Lost in a move, destroyed in a flood, missing […]
A Roof Guaranteed by Law: Constituting a Right of Use Over Dominican Property Between letting someone live in your property informally and giving them a full usufruct lies a figure Dominican practice underuses: the right of use (derecho de uso). Drawn from the Civil Code, it grants its holder the right to use another’s property, […]
Mine, Not Ours: The Declaration of Separate Property in Dominican Marriages Dominican law’s default marital regime, the community of property, comes with a powerful presumption: what is acquired during the marriage belongs to both spouses. It is a fair default and a dangerous one, because not everything acquired during a marriage is actually community property. […]
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