hrvatski

Mehanizmi prijenosa vlasništva nad nekretninama u srednjovjekovnom gradu: primjer Zadra

The surviving records of the Zadar High Court for Civil Disputes from the second half of the 14th century provide insight into the mechanisms of almost all ownership transfers of real estate properties in medieval Zadar. I analyze court records and norms of legal conduct in specific situations prescribed in the Zadar Statute to reveal most procedures in the process of transferring real estate ownership from one person to another and outline the circumstances in which these transfers usually took place. The first real estate transfer mechanism is not directly related to judicial practice and it involves a transfer of ownership through the purchase and sale contracts. Such contracts have been widely preserved in Zadar notary records, and since they have been thoroughly studied, it should only be mentioned here that they often do not reveal the entire reality that lies behind the legal acts preserved in the form of contracts. This is best illustrated by a 1386 lawsuit which shows that these contracts were not necessarily aimed at exchange of real estate for money, but rather that they could sometimes be fictive, revealing in this very case that the sale contracts regarding two real estates were used as a cover for raising a loan and paying the interest through an additional contract of lease of the same real estates to the person who had previously sold them. Next mechanism of real estate transfer of ownership was conducted through the institution of inheritance. Two models can be distinguished here. The first is inheritance through a will, where testament-appointed heirs inherit testator's assets after his death, including real estate if there were any. Another model is inheritance ab intestato, involving situations where the deceased did not leave a will appointing his heirs. In this case, the Statute regulated inheritance of the assets by his nearest blood relatives. For both models the Zadar Statute contains detailed procedures for succession, indicating also complete hereditary chain for the ab intestato succession. Finally I should mention two mechanisms closely related to judicial practice. The first involved executions of real estate which stemmed from the verdicts in civil disputes, regardless of whether the dispute was related to real estate or money claims. The other mechanism consisted of exercising a kind of lien on the defendant's property and was applied in those cases where the defendant defaulted to a subpoena. The purpose of such a mechanism was to ensure plaintiff's satisfaction of claims in the event of reaching a verdict by default judgment and to force defendants to approach the court in resolving the dispute if not wanting to lose ownership of the real estate so pledged. Who would get ownership of the real estate after reaching the verdict in favour of the plaintiff depended on the subject of dispute. If the subject of dispute was actual real estate, the pledge and execution were exercised over the disputed property, in which case, and based on a verdict, ownership of that property had to be transferred to the plaintiff. However, if the subject of the dispute was a money claim, the plaintiff could only acquire the right to sell the property at auction after reaching the verdict and thus settle his claims. In this way, ownership of the seized real estate exceeded to third parties, i.e. those who bought the property at auction.

Curia maior civilium ; Zadar ; kupoprodajni ugovori ; nasljedstvo ; založno pravo ; ovrha

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