Bill 11440 to Simplify Compensation for Destroyed Housing: What It Entails.

According to ТСН: Thousands of Ukrainians who lost their homes due to the war face a serious problem: the State Register of Property Rights to Real Estate (SRP) has no information about their property, as the original documents were lost and the BTI archives fell into occupation. Many victims are trying to solve this issue through the courts, but this process is long and costly.

Currently, a bill is being considered in the Verkhovna Rada that aims to simplify the procedure for obtaining compensation for the affected.

"This is part of life": a story from Kharkiv region

Natalia struggles to talk about her apartment in the village of Dvorichna in the Kupiansk district of Kharkiv region, where she lived for 20 years.

"This is part of life"

— she cried. With the start of the full-scale war, Dvorichna became a zone of active hostilities, and her apartment was destroyed, rendering the whole building unfit for living.

After evacuating to Sumy region, the woman decided to submit documents for compensation but faced difficulties.

Proving that it is yours, as the data has disappeared

Natalia had all the documents for the apartment, including the purchase agreement, but this turned out to be insufficient. To obtain compensation, property rights must be registered in the SRP.

This situation is common for many. The register only started operating in 2013, so information about properties purchased or received before that time often remained only in paper archives of the BTI.

Lawyers note that some BTI archives were destroyed, and others are under occupation, making it extremely difficult to obtain information, especially when victims have no originals of documents:

"They could have burned together with the building or remained in occupied territory. Getting a duplicate in a frontline zone is also not easy now. Often, notaries who certified contracts are no longer working. Archives are destroyed or relocated."

— says Olena Samoïlova, senior analyst at the NGO "Right to Protection".

Restoring documents can take an indefinite amount of time or become a case without resolution. The only option is to go to court.

"We have an example where a citizen of Ukraine has been in court for more than a year and a half and still has not received a decision. And there are positive cases where courts resolved cases in three to four months, establishing the legal fact of property ownership."

— notes Dmytro Lubinets, the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada for Human Rights.

Bill 11440: Aims to Simplify the Procedure

In order to facilitate the procedure for those who have documents but do not have data in the SRP, deputies developed bill No. 11440, which passed its first reading in December last year.

The bill proposes a simplified procedure for entering data regarding property rights for real estate acquired before 2013, in the absence of access to BTI archives.

"A person with legal documents can contact a notary, and that will be enough to enter data into the register."

— says Olena Shuliak, co-author of the bill, head of the "Servant of the People" party.

To protect the real estate market from abuses, the following safeguards are proposed:

• The simplified mechanism will only operate in areas where there is no access to the BTI register or where these records have been destroyed (according to the list).
• Property registered in this manner may have restrictions, including prohibiting the owner from disposing of it.

Olena Samoïlova emphasizes the importance of adopting bill 11440, as an increase in cases of problems with confirming property rights is observed.

Lawyers advise citizens to check whether their property data are entered in the SRP and, if necessary, to do so as soon as possible.

Natalia Kush received a court ruling:

"This is our big step because we already have documents in our hands."

She is preparing documents for compensation and hopes that the new law will be adopted and her fellow villagers will also be able to exercise their rights.

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