A family dispute that reached the Spanish courts ended unfavorably for a woman who tried, more than 30 years later, to acquire title to the land where her husband built the family home. The action, filed against his own grandson, was rejected because it was filed outside the legal deadline, according to the Spanish newspaper Noticias Trabajo, specialized in labor and legal matters.
The central issue was linked to the so-called “inverted accession”: in simple terms, the possibility of, under certain conditions, whoever built on someone else’s land being able to acquire the part of land occupied by compensating the owner, especially when the construction is worth more than the land. In this case, the grandmother claimed that the house had been built with the consent of the then owner and that, therefore, she should be able to acquire the land through compensation.
A work completed in 1985 and an action presented only in 2021
According to the same source, the woman lived in 2021 in a house built on a plot that was titled by her daughter and which, later, passed on to her grandson, who ended up bringing the action. The house would have been completed in 1985 and the process was only initiated in November 2021.
The Court of First Instance No. 3 of Granollers rejected the action due to prescription based on article 121-20 of the Civil Code of Catalonia, which sets a general deadline of 10 years for claims (except for situations such as adverse possession or special rules). Thus, more than three decades after the completion of the work, the intention was considered clearly out of date.
Court of Appeal confirms: time has run out of the claim
The Barcelona Provincial Hearing fully confirmed the decision and highlighted that, under the terms of article 121-20, “the claims of any class expire after ten years”. More than 30 years passed between the completion of the house (around 1985) and the filing of the lawsuit (in 2021), which made it impossible to recognize the intended right.
The grandmother also tried, on appeal, to have the acquisition of the land through adverse possession recognized. However, the court rejected this argument as it was only introduced on appeal, qualifying it as the change of the booka substantial change to the legal basis that cannot be made at this stage of the process.
According to , the author argued that the value of the house was higher than that of the land and that, therefore, she should be able to acquire the land through compensation, under article 542-9 of the Catalan Civil Code. Even so, having acted out of time, the court concluded that it was not possible to recognize this legal effect, even if the construction had a higher value than the land.
The decision, however, is not definitive: according to the same source, it would still be possible to file an appeal for marriage or procedural infraction to the Supreme Court.
What would it be like in Portugal? Legal context
In Portugal, similar cases fall within the accession rules provided for in the Civil Code (articles 1325 et seq.). The law allows that, in certain circumstances, anyone who builds in good faith on someone else’s land can acquire the property by paying the value of the building/land before the works, or compensation solutions may be available depending on the added value (article 1340).
Furthermore, in disputes over real estate, the passage of many years tends to place adverse possession at the center: without registration of the title or mere possession, adverse possession can occur after 15 years (good faith) or 20 years (bad faith), depending on the specific situation.
In other words, a dispute that only arose after three decades would also face very relevant obstacles in Portuguese law, although the solution always depends on the facts proven in court.
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