• Dictionary of judicial terms frequently used in the real estate domain

Dictionary of judicial terms frequently used in the real estate domain

Because we are firstly advisors and our task is to help you in your operations with real estate products, to avoid confusions due to specialized terms, we here present a dictionary of judicial terms frequently used in the real estate domain:

ACT - Document elaborated by a state authority, which asserts a fact, an obligation, someboby’s identity. There are several categories of acts: juristic act, administrative act,  administration act, act of disposal, processual access and procedure act.
ANTECONTRACT – Agreement by which one or both of the parts take the obligation to close un the future a certain contract whose essential content is determined in present. It is thus an agreement of will prior to the closing of another contract, whose object is the assumation of the obligation to conclude, namely to close afterwards the contract promised, within the conditions stipulated through the respective previous agreement.
ADVANCE
Sum of money, paid before by the beneficiary, sum which – depending on the stipulations of the contract – can be lost by the part that has not accomplished its contract obligations.
LAND CARD – official writing representing the base unity in the system of real estate advertisementwhich holds evidence of buildings not of owners. L.C. is assessed separately for each building and includes notes about all the acts of transfer or constitution of rights regardong the respective building. It is assessed and numbered on localities.
CAPACITY OF USE (subjective capacity) OF THE PERSON – expression designating the capacity of the individual to hold rights and obligations. This concept expresses man’s quality to be or not to be rightful subject. In other terms, his capacity to be titular of rights and obligations.
CAPACITY OF USE OF THE LEGAL ENTITY – the general and abstract aptitude of the legal entity to have rights and obligations corresponding to the purpose held in view at the founding of the entity. It is inalienable.  CONTRACT CLAUSE – stipulation included by the parties, by virtue of the principle of freedom of conventions, within the content of their contract.
CONCESSION –  judicial operation with the purpose of pointing out certain economic activities, public services, units of production of some autonomous administration boards and lands owned by the state.
COMMISSION CONTRACT – contract on basis of which the person or the legal entity called  commissioner, obliges himself to another person (or legal entity) called commitent, to close certain judicial acts in their own name, but on the account of the latter, receiving for the respective service a payment called commission, calculated by percentage from the value of the operation achieved.
CONTRACT OF COMMODATE – contract by which the person called commodant, issues, for temporary use, to another person called commodater, an item under the obligation for the latter to pay it back in its nature, its individuality.
DONATION CONTRACT  – solemn, unilateral contract, with free title by which one of the parts, called donor, reduces, actually and revocable, with a liberal intention, his patrimony or with a right (real or of claim), correspondingly increasing the patrimony of the other party, called grantee, with the same right, without pursuing to obtain something in exchange.
MAINTENANCE CONTRACT  – contract by virtue of which one of the parties called maintened alienates a good or pays a sum of money (called capital) to the other party, called maintainer, who obliges in exchange to ensure his maintenance (namely all necessary to the living), along his entire life, and, at decease to bury him on tradition.
LOCATION CONTRACT  – contract by virtue of which a person called locator obliges to ensure to another person called located the entire or partial use of an item or the performing of a service within a determined period of time, in exchange for an appropriate price.
MANDATE CONTRACT  – contract by virtue of which a person called mandatar obliges to do something on basis of another person, called mandant, from whom he has received a mandate with this purpose
CONTRACT OF LIFE ANNUITY – contract by which the person called credirenter, alienates a good or pays a sum of money (called capital) to another person called debirenter, who obliges, in exchange, to perform in the favour of the first o periodical catering of money, called life annuity, until the decease.
CONTRACT OF EXCHANGE – contract by which the parties, called copermutants, give to one another an item for another.
SUBLOCATION CONTRACT – agreement of will on basis of which the tenant who has achieved temporary use of a good based on a sublocation contract subrents that good to a third party (subtenant) who obliges to pay rent.
SALE-PURCHASING CONTRACT – contract by which one of the parts, called seller, displaces the property of a good of or upon the other part, called purchaser, who obliges to pay, in exchange, to the first (namely the seller) a sum of money agreed as price of the good sold.
RIGHT OF ABITATION – right to use a dwelling house. Basically, it cannot be yielded or rent; by exception its titular can rent to somebody else that part of the house which he does not inhabit.
RIGHT OF CLAIM – expresses the ability of the creditor from an obligational judicial report to require the debtor the accomplishment of the correlative obligation to give, do or not do something.                                      RIGHT OF MORTGAGE– real accessory right having as object a good building of the debtor or of another person without dispossession, which gives the mortgage creditor the right to pursue the respective building no matter whom it might belong to and to be paid preeminently by the other creditors from the price of that good.
RIGHT OF PREEMPTION – feature of a certain person to be preferred to any other person in the purchasing of a certain good .
RIGHT OF PROPERTY – subjective right, which gives judicial expression to the aproppriance of an item in a certain social form and which allows the individual, the collective judicial entities or the state, or its organs (central or local) to possess or use and dispose of the respective item, either directly and immediately, by its own power and in its own interest, or indirectly and immediately, as effect of pointing out by their titulars of the real principial rights constituted upon it, within and under the observance of the existing legislation.
RIGHT OF BONDAGE – actual real estate right, accessory, perpetual and indivisible which dismembers the property, assigning to its titular certain prerogatives strictly limited upon somebody else’s good.               RIGHT OF SUPERFICY – real right consisting in the right of property held by a person called superficiary over the constructions, plantations and other workings from the land belonging to another person, land upon which the superficiary gets a right of use.
RIGHT OF LIFE INTEREST – real right which gives to its titular possession and use upon the things belonging to somebody else and the possibility to exercise these attributes in the same conditions as the owner, but having the duty to preserve the substance of the respective things.
EVICTION – term designating the loss by the purchaser, entirely or in part, of the right of property upon the utem acquisitioned, or the disturbance of the purchaser in exercising the prerogatives of owner regarding that particular item, loss or disturbance due to the use by the seller or by a third party of a right excluding, entirely or in part, the right of the purchaser regarding the respective good.
EXCERPT FROM THE CARD LAND  – Document issued by the Land Card Offices of the Law Courts, for buildings situated within their territorial ray of activity, asserting the fact that the seller has never alienated or mortgaged the apartment before. For the issuing of the Certificate of Tasks it is mandatory that all the basic acts are transcripted in the Register of real estate inscriptions and transcriptions.
PLEDGE– accessory, real, unilateral and indivisible contract on basis of which the debtor or a third party issues to the creditor or to a third party, a mobile property, tangible or intangible, in order to guarantee the execution of an obligation.
GUARANTEE - Legal or conventional way to ensure the execution of obligations (for ex. the penal clause, the earnest money etc.). In international commercial contracts an important place is held by the guarantees, contractual obligations, which can be personal guarantees and real guarantees.                                              LAND INSIDE THE LOCALITY – The territory determined through the General Urbanistic Plan (PUG), which includes the set of lands with and without buildings, that form a locality. This land can be developed by expanding outside the locality only on basis of regional urbanistic plans (PUZ), approved by law, integrated afterwards in the General Urbanistic Plan (PUG) of the locality.
MORTGAGE – Real and accessory guarantee that does not dispossess the debtor owner of the good mortgaged. It gives the creditor the possibility to pursue the good in order to get his claim preferentially.
INTABULATION – Inscription in the Land Card at the Offices of Land Card of the Law Courts, for buildings situated within their territorial ray of activity, of the right of property and of the other real rights upon a building.
STOPPING – modality of forced execution consisting in the unavailability of the sums of money, titles of value or other goods that are mobile, intangible, watchable owed to the debtor by a third party or which the latter will owe in the future on the grounds of existing judicial relations.
PROMISE OF CONTRACT – convention by which one or both of the parts obliges to close in the future a certain contract whose essential content is determined in present.
SEVERANCE – term designating generically the breaking of the sinalagmatic contract with successive execution, producing effects only in the future, but not in the past and which is motivated by the fact of inappropriate execution of the contract by one of the parts from causes resorting to that.
RESOLUTION OF CONTRACT – designates the annulation with retroactive effect of the synalagmatic contract with uno ictu execution, at the request of a part resulting from the blamable unexecution of the performance assumed by the other part.
SUBROGATION – judicial procedure consisting in the substitution of the creditor from a judicial obligation by another  person who by paying to him (the initial cerditor) the debt of the debtor receives the quality of creditor from that debtor together with all the rights that he had against him the paid creditor.
HIDDEN VICES – generically designate the flaws or qualitative defficiencies of the good sold, rent, or of the workings executed, which, existing in the moment of the handing of the good, were not known by the receiver and could not be discovered by him through the usual ways of checking or reception and which make that the good cannot be used according to its destination or they reduce its possibilities of use to such an extent that the receiever might be supposed of not having contracted or consented to pay the price assigned by contract if he had known it.
WILL – judicial unilateral, solemn, act, essentially personal and revocable by which the maker disposes, in the case of his decease, of his entire fortune or only of a part of it.
URBANISM - Act which makes known to the applicant the elements that characterize the judicial, economical and technical regime of a building, the urbanistic requirements that are to be fulfilled, as well as the list of notices and agreements necessary to authorize the execution of the workings of construction.
USUFRUCT - Real right on basis of which a person, called usufructuer, can use a thing belonging to another person called nude owner and also benefit of the advantages of the respective thing, to gather its fruit, but with the obligation to preserve the substance of the property and at the stopping of this right to give it back to the owner. The right of usufruct can be acquired by usucapion.
OFFICE OF LAND CARD -compartment auxiliary to the Law Court, having as object of activity the inscription in the Land Card of the judicial acts and facts regarding the buildings.
CERTIFICATE OF HEIR- It is a title on basis of which the person for whom it was issued makes the proof of his quality of heir. It is regulated by Law no. 36/1995. It is issued on basis of the final closing, assigned within the notary hereditary procedure, by notary within the territory of whom the deceased had had his last domicile.
The certificate includes observations about the hereditary amount, the number and the quality of the heirs and the proportions received by each from the patrimony of the deceased.
HEIR- The person who heirs or is about to heir the estate of the deceased, holding the right of hereditament.
The Civil Code does not define the heir, but in art. 650 asserts the categories of heirs, namely: - legal heirs (accede to the estate by law);
- testamentary heirs (accede to the estate by will);
- contractual heirs (accede to the estate by contract).
OWNER- person ot legal entity who is the exclusive titular or within indivision of the real right upon the amount of property put under inscription.
REAL ESTATE ADVERTISEMENT- system of inscription in public documents of the properties together with the real estate rights held by owners and possessors upon them. Real estate advertisement can be assigned by the Land Card
WILL- Judicial act by which a person disposes of his entire patrimony or of a part of it, after his decease. It is one of the ways to alienate with free title the property. The law stipulates that the will is a revocable act by which the possessor disposes during his decease of all or of just a part of his wealth.

An article offered by  Casa Pitas