Land surveying without the consent of neighbors Legal advice

The land surveying procedure is necessary to register a land plot for cadastral registration. Without this, the owner cannot register ownership and, as a result, sell, donate or exchange the object. In addition, the absence of officially confirmed boundaries of the site may lead to the seizure of part of the territory by unscrupulous neighbors. Therefore, if there is a land plot, it is advisable to determine its boundaries in a timely manner. Let's consider whether neighbors' signatures are needed during land surveying - whether it is possible to do land surveying without approval.

What to do if the neighbor does not sign the deed?

A prerequisite for land surveying is the coordination of boundaries with neighbors. Coordination of land surveying is carried out according to a certain procedure.

When planning a land survey, neighbors must be notified no later than a month before it begins . As a rule, a day is appointed for this, common to all owners of neighboring plots. The warning must be issued against signature.

On the appointed day, the owner of the plot, having prepared in advance an act on the approval of boundaries, invites the neighbors on the plot to sign it. This act is attached to the survey file and states the legality of the survey work. But dependence on neighbors is an unpredictable issue, especially when it comes to property rights.

If you know that your neighbor will not sign the notice and also refuses to sign the boundary approval act, it is best for you to send the land survey notice by registered mail with return receipt requested. This document will serve as confirmation of the competence of your actions.

Some experienced lawyers who act as intermediaries in land surveying recommend sending the notice three times , after which it acquires the stable legal status of the signature of the person to whom it was presented.

However, according to the law, your warning (notification) is valid if, within one month after sending the letter to you, there was no reaction from the neighbors, and, accordingly, no claims.

But the question of land surveying in this case will be decided by the geodetic company you contacted for the service. If they consider this rule appropriate, you will be able to carry out land surveying on the basis of a postal notification attached to the boundary approval act that the neighbor has received a warning.

But this is only the case if the neighbor does not appear at the meeting to agree on boundaries . Subsequently, if he goes to court claiming that he did not sign the act of coordinating boundaries, you will win the case, since you followed all the procedures.

The situation will be different if the neighbor presents a written claim with a notification of refusal to sign the act of coordinating the boundaries, with an explanation of the reasons. Or he will appear at the meeting by invitation and express his complaints and reasons for refusing to sign the agreement.

In this case, the only possible option to resolve the issue unilaterally is to file a lawsuit in court.

In this case, the fact of the status of the neighbor in the area plays a very important role. The specifics of conducting a case in court will depend on what legal relations bind you. If you select the most relevant algorithm of action, you will win the case. The following legal relations may be established between you:

You both own shares in common (collective) property.
You are both land owners.
One of you is the owner, and the other disposes of the plot by the right of permanent (perpetual) use or lifelong inheritable possession.

A prerequisite for all forms of legal relations between you is the sending of a notification (warning) about the signing of the agreement. What to do if the boundaries of the land plot are not established? Find out here.

If you do not fulfill this condition, after the land survey has been carried out, a neighbor can easily justify its illegality, and your money for carrying out land survey work will be wasted.

Legislative norms

Land surveying is regulated by both the Land Code of the Russian Federation and the Town Planning Code of the Russian Federation.

In the Land Code of the Russian Federation, you need to pay attention to the first chapter, where you can find article 11.4, which deals with the division of land plots.

In the Town Planning Code, Article 43 is devoted to land surveying, which describes the procedure for preparing projects for surveying the boundaries of land plots.

It is also worth remembering the Law “On Land Management”, which was adopted back in 2001, and another legal act - the Law “On the State Real Estate Cadastre”, which also regulates land surveying issues in Russia.

Methods of land surveying without the consent of neighbors

You can do without the consent of your neighbors if:

They sent a warning three times by registered mail with notification, every 2 weeks, but there was no response.
They sent a warning by registered mail with notification, but there was no response or counterclaims, and the notification of receipt was filed as the authority of your actions, to the act of coordinating boundaries.
In the absence of neighbors and provided that you do not know their location and finding their address is not possible.

These may also include other valid reasons that make it difficult to sign a document. For example, a neighbor is on a long business trip or on vacation - accordingly, he will not be able to sign. Of course, some people use an electronic signature, but not all.

In this case, you will have to negotiate the procedure for signing the agreement with his close relatives or ask him to send a written message stating that he has no complaints regarding the land surveying procedure. This written document must be filed with the border approval act; it will serve as an analogue of a signature.

An appeal to the court will be necessary in case of refusal to sign the act in accordance with motivated claims. If your neighbor becomes the initiator of the claims, you indicate in the statement of claim only the reason for his failure to sign the agreement, and let him deal with his claims independently.

But if on your part there were deliberate violations of the boundaries between areas, it is better for you to restore everything. If you are the initiator of the claim, and your neighbor has committed a violation, which makes the land surveying procedure undesirable for him, indicate in the statement of claim all the details of the violations that he committed and give them confirmation.

You can not only obtain permission to restore borders through land surveying, but also restore legal borders. At the same time, it is reasonable to recover from your neighbor changes in accounting records if they include an infringement of your property rights.

If you own a common plot , based on established shares, do the same. By land surveying, you can allocate your share to full ownership, but first receive a certificate from the administration stating that your share meets the minimum (and other) standards as a separate independent plot.

If you own the total area of the plot jointly without determining the size of the share in common law, first establish the volume of the share for the residential premises.

You have the right to request the disassociation in your direction of that share of the plot that you have in the residential premises.

In this case, the claim must ask for permission to allocate a share from the common shared property through land surveying.

Your neighbors refuse to sign the territory approval act

Neighbors in the area live nearby. You communicate with them, but they do not express a desire to participate in the land surveying procedure and do not sign documents. It is possible to take measurements without them, but you will need to follow some formalities in strict sequence:

We contact a cadastral engineer. He draws up a contract for land surveying.
The cadastral specialist draws up an act, which will be the most key document in our situation. Without it, it will not be possible to transfer information and measurements to the cadastral register with clearly defined boundaries.
Before the survey itself, all people living in the neighborhood must be notified. They have a vested interest in attending and have a well-founded legal right to do so.
Citizens living in the neighborhood are notified by registered letter. You will need to make a personal appeal to the person, informing him about the date and time of the survey.
Receipts must be kept. If one of your neighbors is not present at the procedure, the notification will confirm the fact that you informed this person. Their absence will indicate that they agree with all boundaries and coordinates and completely trust the cadastral engineer. The land survey will be legally binding.
If the owner of the adjacent territory does not send you a written objection or does not appear during the land survey, then be sure to record this point in the approval act (the cadastral specialist always has it).
Receipts for notifying neighbors must be attached to the document being drawn up. This will be legal evidence.
If you don’t know anything about your neighbors, then be sure to advertise in the regional media about the planned land survey. This may be the most ordinary local newspaper. The owner of the adjacent territory has thirty days to think about it. He is obliged to give his “okay”, simply to declare himself. If this does not happen, do everything yourself. The land surveying procedure will be completely legal.

Act

The act of approval is an important document; it is the key evidence when considering controversial housing issues in court. It is drawn up by a cadastral worker with the signature of all persons participating in the land survey (owners of all plots whose boundaries are the subject of clarification).

It is the engineer who is responsible for the compliance of the persons signing the document! Its tasks include checking the passports of all land survey participants, and if their representatives are present, notarized powers of attorney to protect the interests of land owners.

In addition to the passport data of the owners, the act contains cadastral information about the plots (address, area, etc.) and their drawing with the boundaries determined during the approval process.

If all owners of the affected areas were present when drawing up the document, then the act is considered completed.

How does demarcation with neighbors occur?

The most important condition for carrying out land surveying is the approval of neighbors for delimiting the land area. This is done as follows.

You need to notify all your neighbors about the start of land surveying no later than a month in advance. As a rule, the term and date are set for all owners the same. It is better to issue a warning in writing and signed.

On the agreed day, neighbors are asked to sign the demarcation act, which must be prepared in advance. This act is attached to the case and further confirms the entire legality of the land surveying procedure. However, resolving issues with neighbors, especially those related to their property, is not so simple.

Challenging the decision

When one person begins to challenge someone's decision, he thereby shows his disagreement with the boundaries that currently exist, which may or may not be entered into the register. In this case, someone's interests are already affected.

Here are a number of questions that need to be addressed:

Is it possible to challenge a decision on land surveying?
Is it possible to challenge the decision to survey a neighbor’s property?
And can a neighbor challenge the decision to survey your property?

In order to answer these questions, we need to consider several very controversial situations.

If land surveying was carried out, but one of the warring parties believes that the points and boundaries of the site are set incorrectly, and part of its territory is illegally in the possession of a neighbor. In this case, qualified people from non-profit land management companies are invited, who will already take repeated measurements right on the spot, so you will have to go through the procedure again. For clarity, they are indicated by new special signs. Even if such arguments do not convince the opponent in any way, and it is not possible to resolve the dispute peacefully, then you should go to court.

If land surveying has never been carried out at all, and there are no clear boundaries for gardening, when even the neighbors themselves have no idea where it goes. In this case, we are talking about the absence of any registration, including cadastral registration, in which all boundaries are clearly entered into the register. Then a geodetic survey should be carried out based on the available land documents. And already having in hand objective data on the location of points on the site, we can talk about a violation of the rights of one or another participant in the dispute. If it is possible to reach an agreement peacefully, then they draw up an act in which everyone must sign that they agree with the established boundaries. If this cannot be done, then the issues will have to be resolved through the courts.

Typically, such situations occur in the following cases:

the inability to agree on the boundaries of their plots according to the cadastral plan;
if there are unauthorized buildings overlooking the neighbor’s territory that need to be demolished;
division of plots between spouses.

What is the essence of the dispute, are signatures of neighbors required?

According to the federal law, you can make a distinction between your plots in a simple form, that is, without measuring the area of such a plot, introducing any specifics into its configuration and turning points.

All this works, but only until the moment when the neighbor makes serious complaints, believing that part of his plot of land has been brazenly seized. If there are no clearly defined and approved boundaries, then it is simply useless to prove something. How do you find out what land surveying is, and are the neighbors’ signatures required? Land surveying is a strong point for asserting one’s rights. Cadastral documents should be received in a timely manner; the cost of this procedure is low, but it will save a lot of time in the future.

Responsibility and contestation of results

It should be understood that the procedure for determining the boundaries of a site is complex, and the reasons for appealing the results may be:

The owner of the adjacent plot believes that the border prescribed in the act infringes on his land ownership. Then evidence and documentary evidence of objections must be provided. If it is impossible to reach one solution, the participants have the right to go to court. The person who disagrees sends a request to the court to declare the act invalid.
The signature of one of the interested parties is forged or signed by a person who does not have the right to do so. In this case, the act is subject to appeal (with an examination to verify the authenticity of the signature).
Mistakes by a cadastral service employee. When determining the boundaries, the engineer may make a mistake and set the boundary incorrectly. In this case, the court will order a land survey, following which the survey of the land plot will be repeated.

The consent of the interested parties is one of the main criteria for the legality of a boundary act. You should take a responsible approach to complying with all formalities when notifying and coordinating neighbors in order to avoid lawsuits in the future.

Possible difficulties

Sometimes the procedure can be associated with additional difficulties:

Unformed land. If it turns out that one of the adjacent plots has not been registered as a property, you should contact the chairman of the partnership or municipality in whose territory it is located for additional information. Usually there is information about the reasons for using each land plot. If it is confirmed that the property belongs to a neighbor on a perpetual use basis, he has the legal right to participate in land surveying and sign the relevant documents.
The actual absence of the official owner. Such situations are usually associated with the death of the previous owner, when potential heirs cannot enter into legal rights due to the fact that the 6-month period has not passed or there are property disputes. In such cases, there is no ownership right, so the heirs do not have the right to sign the agreement. The grounds for the owner's absence must be confirmed by a certificate from a notary.
Capture of part of the plot by another neighbor. First of all, you need to make sure that the data indicated in the cadastral and boundary passports matches, and then contact a licensed geodetic company. Only its specialists have the right to draw up a document confirming the illegal occupation of the territory. The problem with the owner of the adjacent plot can be resolved peacefully or in court, arguing the appeal with the provisions of Art. 62 of the Land Code of the Russian Federation.

Coordination of the boundaries of the site with neighbors is one of the key stages in the preparation of a boundary plan.
What to do if any of them refuses to take part in the procedure or simply does not respond to notifications sent? The lawyers on our site will tell you the best course of action to take in your situation. Attention!

Due to frequent changes in legislation, information sometimes becomes outdated faster than we can update it on the website.
All cases are very individual and depend on many factors. Basic information does not guarantee a solution to your specific problems.

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Consequences of illegal land surveying

The cadastral engineer is an official.
Therefore, in case of violation of the work procedure, incl. and drawing up an agreement, you should submit demands to the court to declare the specialist’s actions illegal and the act invalid. It is also necessary to demand that boundary signs be restored at the previous borders. Engineers are also liable for unlawful actions. In a dispute over illegal survey results, courts may involve engineers as defendants. This is especially important, since if the land surveying procedure is declared illegal, the customer of the work performed will have material claims against the contractor.