Limited Proprietary Rights to Residential Premises in Russian and Foreign Civil Law

The right to housing is important and universally recognized. In foreign countries, in order to ensure the realization of the right to housing, in addition to the right of ownership, other limited proprietary rights are provided granting citizens with the right to own and use residential premises. The paper considers the limited proprietary rights to residential premises in France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Russia. It is established that the legislation of the abovementioned foreign countries enshrines real rights to use the residential premise, which, being a kind of usufruct (personal servitude), possesses specific features. They are facility feature (which includes residential premises), the authorized entity (which allows for a natural person) only, as well as the purposive character (this sets the right to stay in the residential premises for personal needs and the needs of his family).   In Russia, there are problems of legal regulation of relations between the use of residential premises by members of the owner’s family and former members of the owner’s family who gave consent to privatization, which cause difficulties in practice and numerous disputes in the doctrine. The outcomes of the analysis of the proposed changes in civil and housing legislation make it possible to conclude that the discussed innovations are not able to solve the existing problems and contradictions.

The author proposes to consolidate in civil legislation such a limited real right as the right to use residential premises, which is a kind of usufruct, which will combine all existing real rights to residential premises. The legal structure of the right to use residential premises is formulated, its content, the grounds for its occurrence and termination are set out.

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