Rectification of Errors at the Dominican Title Registry

When the Record Itself Is Wrong: The Rectification of Material Errors at the Title Registry The procedure for the rectification of material errors at the title registy addresses cases where the record itself contains the error. A name misspelled in the inscription, a digit slipped in an area or a boundary, an identity number transposed […]

Incorporating real estate as family property

Bien de Familia: How to Make Your Dominican Home Seizure-Proof and Inheritance-Tax Exempt Any individual may incorporate, for their own benefit or that of their heirs at law or their spouse, an unseizable real estate property that will be called Family Property (“Bien de Familia” in Spanish). Among the advantages of the real estate property […]

Reserve of Priority Certificate in Dominican Closings

Freezing Your Place in Line: The Certification With Reserve of Priority in Dominican Closings Every Dominican closing lives with a quiet fear: the gap. Between the day the parties sign and the day the transfer or mortgage is actually registered, the title remains in the seller’s or borrower’s name, and in a system where priority […]

Trading Old Title for Current Title at the Dominican Registry

Trading Old Paper for Current Title: The Canje Registral at the Dominican Registry Dominican titles have a wardrobe problem: the system has changed clothes several times, and many owners still hold the old outfits. Certificates and duplicates issued under earlier frameworks, different formats, different terminology, sometimes documents whose categories no longer exist as such, remain […]

Cancelling an Easement on Dominican Property

The Path Nobody Uses Anymore: Cancelling an Easement on Dominican Registered Property Easements are written for geography that changes. A right of way granted when the neighboring parcel had no road access; a utility crossing for infrastructure since rerouted; a drainage or view restriction negotiated between owners two transfers ago. The land evolves, the need […]

The Usufruct as Dominican Estate Planning Tool

Keep the Income, Give the Asset: The Property Usufruct as Dominican Estate Planning Tool The most elegant move in Dominican estate planning is also one of its oldest: split the property in two. Not physically, legally. The usufruct separates ownership into the right to use the property and collect its income (the usufruct itself) and […]

Cancelling a Conventional Mortgage in the DR

You Paid Off the Mortgage. The Registry Disagrees: Cancelling a Conventional Mortgage in the DR Ask any Dominican homeowner when their mortgage ended and they will name the day of the last payment. Ask the Title Registry and it will name a different day, the day the cancellation was registered. Between those two dates, which […]

Cancelling Provisional Note on Dominican Property

Cancelling a Provisional Note on Dominican Property: Clearing the Record Provisional annotations exist to protect pending claims, and, like scaffolding, they are supposed to come down when the work is over. In practice, Dominican titles accumulate annotations that have long since lost their reason: the lawsuit ended, the claim was settled or abandoned, the term […]

Registering a Lease in the Dominican Republic

Registering a Lease in the Dominican Republic: The Difference Between a Contract and a Right Every lease binds the landlord who signed it. The harder question is whether it binds the next owner, the buyer who acquires the building mid-term, the bank that forecloses on it, the heir who inherits it. For tenants who have […]

Attaching a Provisional Note on Dominican Property

The Provisional Note: How to Put the World on Notice Over Dominican Real Estate Property, Before It Is Too Late Litigation is slow; property moves fast. Between the day a claim over Dominican real estate arises and the day a court resolves it, the property can be sold, mortgaged or encumbered, and in a registration […]