Lost documents for an apartment or house: how to confirm ownership rights
Due to the full-scale war, thousands of Ukrainians have lost or damaged real estate documents. The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine explained that the destruction of paper ownership documents does not terminate the ownership right to housing, but the absence of information in the State Register of Property Rights to Real Estate (SRPR) may create problems during sale, inheritance, or obtaining state compensation.
It primarily concerns real estate ownership acquired before January 1, 2013, but information about it was neither entered into the electronic register nor preserved in the paper archives of the BTI.
The Ministry of Justice emphasized that owners of such housing can undergo the procedure of entering data into the SRPR in several stages.
The owner needs to contact the authority or institution that issued the original ownership document.
If the housing was registered through local self-government bodies, it is necessary to contact the relevant city, settlement, or village council or its legal successor. If ownership arose based on a purchase-sale agreement, gift, exchange, or inheritance certificate, it is necessary to contact a notary or the state notarial archive.
In cases where the institution has been liquidated, archives destroyed, or documents remain in temporarily occupied territory, the owner must protect their rights through the court.
For this, it is necessary to file a claim for recognition of ownership rights to real estate.
Any available evidence confirming the right to housing can be attached to the application:
- archival certificates;
- technical passport;
- decision on land allocation;
- other documents;
- testimonies of people who can confirm the fact of property ownership.
After the court decision is made and comes into legal force, it can be used for state registration of ownership rights.
For registration, it is necessary to prepare:
- the court decision that has come into force;
- owner’s passport;
- taxpayer identification number.
You can apply to any state registrar or notary in Ukraine. Registration based on a court decision is carried out on the principle of extraterritoriality — regardless of where the real estate is located.
As previously reported by the "Judicial and Legal Newspaper", the Supreme Court, in a panel of judges of the First Judicial Chamber of the Cassation Civil Court in the ruling dated July 17, 2026, in case No. 522/17560/23, considered the issue of establishing the fact of permanent residence in Ukraine as a legal fact necessary for further citizenship registration or immigration permission.
The issue of confirming residence in Ukraine before August 24, 1991, becomes especially important in cases where archival documents remain in temporarily occupied territories and their receipt is objectively impossible. In such cases, judicial practice defines the scope of separate proceedings and the conditions under which a legal fact can be established by the court.
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