HY RU EN
Asset 3

Loading

End of content No more pages to load

Your search did not match any articles

Sara Petrosyan

The house has two owners but was declared property in abeyance

Pargev Ohanyan, a Court of First Instance Judge for the Kentron and Nork-Marash districts of Yerevan has surpassed himself in his civil suit verdict of October 3, 2002. House #29, 11th Aygestan Street was neither more nor less declared a property in abeyance, although the plaintiffs are the legal owners of the house and appealed to the court seeking to protect their property title. The judge justified his verdict this way: "In accordance with Article 178 of the Civil Code of Armenia, a property which does not have an owner or the owner of the property is unknown or has renounced his or her right to it is considered a property in abeyance…".

This formulation by the judge in no way corresponds to reality, for in the case in question the owners are known, they have personally appeared in court with the intention to defend their property and they have once registered their determination through the press. The plaintiffs - the owners of the house, Albert and Tamara Adunts-- appeared in court with the property title in hand registered by the State Committee on Cadastre of Immovable Property. They requested that their other sister's family, temporarily residing in the house and refusing to vacate it, be evicted from their property. The sister, Anahit Khalatyan, who has been living in the house at issue with the consent of the owners, appealed with a counter-claim, asking that the court deprive her sister and brother of the property title and recognize her as the owner of House # 29, 11th Aygestan Street.

Pargev Ohanyan did just that. He deprived Tamara Adunts of her property and recognized Anahit Khalatyan as the owner of the house. However, the property title of Tamara Adunts was recognized by a court verdict valid since February 2002, obliging the State Cadastre to register her property. So far it remains unclear how Mr. Ohanyan ascertained that the co-owners "have in fact renounced their property title and left the property, without the intention to protect their title, to Anahit Khalatyan, who with her family has conscientiously, openly and uninterruptedly owned the house as private property since 1981".

Mr. Ohanyan will have difficulty finding either in Armenian or international law any clause providing the right to deprive an owner of his or her property. But the law is one thing and the Armenian reality is another.

Write a comment

If you found a typo you can notify us by selecting the text area and pressing CTRL+Enter