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 […]

Registering an Adjudicated Dominican Real Estate

From Auction to Ownership: Registering an Adjudication of Dominican Real Estate The gavel falls, the price is paid, and the winning bidder at a Dominican judicial auction walks out with a court decision declaring the property theirs. It is a powerful document, and, until registered, an incomplete victory. In the Dominican Torrens-style system, real rights […]

Dominican Mortgage Creditor Registration

Updating a Mortgage Creditor’s Registration Certificate in the Dominican Republic: Why Lenders Should Not Hold Old Paper. When a mortgage or other secured right is recorded at the Dominican Title Registry, the creditor receives its own official evidence of the registration, today, a certification of registration of creditors. But the format and content of that […]

Updating your ID at the Dominican Title Registry

Your Name Is on the Title, But Is Your ID? Updating Identity Documents at the Dominican Title Registry It is one of the most common, and most avoidable, obstacles in Dominican real estate closings: the seller is unquestionably the owner, but the identity document on the certificate of title no longer matches the one in […]

Contributing Dominican Real Estate to a Company

Contributing Real Estate to a Company in the Dominican Republic: The Contribution in Kind Sooner or later, many property owners in the Dominican Republic decide their real estate belongs inside a company, for liability protection, estate planning, investment structuring or simply to organize a family patrimony. The legal vehicle for moving it there is the […]