Regulation on Terminating Joint Ownership and Reform Thereof in Latvia

Abstract

On 1 May 2022, amendments to Section 1074 and 1075 of the Civil Law entered into force, reforming the basic regulation on terminating joint ownership in Latvia. The current article provides a focussed overview of the previous regulation on terminating joint ownership and the case law, as well as considers the causes, aims and achieved outcomes of the reform implemented by the legislator, providing, to the extent possible, comparison with the Austrian, Swiss and German basic regulation on terminating joint ownership. Due to the limited scope of the article, the new regulation of Section 10741 of the Civil Law on excluding one joint owner from joint ownership is not examined; moreover, in practice this outcome can be achieved also by applying the new solutions for terminating joint ownership, set out in Section 1075 of the Civil Law.