The ruling establishes that a person cannot lose their right to a property registered in the name of the marital community simply for not demanding the division of those assets within two years of the divorce
SANTO DOMINGO. – The Constitutional Court's decision is contained in Judgment TC/0637/26, dated July 27, 2026, which overturned a ruling by the First Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice and ordered that the case be heard again in accordance with the constitutional criteria established in the judgment.
The case file, marked with the number TC-04-2025-0466, originated in a constitutional review appeal and the high court considered that automatically applying the two-year period provided for in article 815 of the Civil Code to registered properties violates the right of ownership, since this type of property is protected by a special regime of imprescriptibility.
Imprescriptible means that the right does not expire or become lost simply due to the passage of time. Unlike other legal actions, which do have a deadline for exercising them, an imprescriptible right can be claimed at any time, regardless of how many years have passed.
What does article 815 say and why the doubts?
When a marriage ends in divorce and there is jointly owned property, Dominican law grants a two-year period, starting from the publication of the divorce decree, for either of the former spouses to request the division of that property. If neither does so within that period, Article 815 of the Civil Code establishes that the division is presumed to have already occurred, and each spouse retains what they possess.
That rule, inherited from the French Civil Code of the 19th century, contradicts a different and more recent principle, that of the imprescriptibility of registered real estate rights, enshrined in Principle IV of Law 108-05 on Real Estate Registration.
Under the land registration system in force in the country since 1920, the right of ownership over a duly registered property is not lost by the mere passage of time or by the possession of a third party.
The question the courts had to resolve was which of the two principles prevails when the property in dispute is, precisely, a property registered in the name of the former couple.
A changing criterion
In February 2023, the Plenary Sessions of the Supreme Court of Justice, through Judgment SCJ-SR-23-0001, had ruled that the two-year period did also apply to registered properties, thus abandoning a previous jurisprudence.
That decision, however, included the dissenting vote of three judges, who argued that subjecting a registered right to a statute of limitations contradicted more than a century of legislative evolution in favor of the imprescriptibility of registration and jeopardized the legal certainty that the State itself is called upon to guarantee.
That reasoning prevailed on March 31, 2026, when the First Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, with Magistrate Miguelina Ureña Núñez as rapporteur, issued Sentence SCJ-PS-26-0530 and changed the criterion: from then on, the action in partition on movable property of the marital community continues to prescribe after two years, but the one that falls on registered real estate is considered imprescriptible.
The TC/0637/26 ruling confirms this same criterion, this time from the constitutional interpretation and with the character of a binding precedent for all courts in the country.
The Constitutional Court reasoned that co-ownership derived from the marital community, when it falls on assets subject to the real estate registration system, is protected by that imprescriptibility, and that the prescription of the action in partition cannot prevail over it.
In simple terms, someone who got divorced and never formally claimed their share of a house, a plot of land or any other property registered in the name of the marital community does not lose that right for having let the two years set by article 815 pass.
As long as the property retains its status as a registered property, the party that does not own it retains the possibility of demanding the partition at any time.
The specific case that gave rise to Judgment TC/0637/26 now returns to an ordinary court, which must hear it again applying this criterion.
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