An Oral Land Sale From 1972 Beat the Registered Title

A woman registered as owner of a plot in Liopetri sued her neighbours for trespass over a strip of about 85 square metres, on which they had kept a wall and part of a garage since 1976. She lost. On 22 September 2026 the Supreme Court held that she holds that strip on trust for the neighbours, because her father had sold it to their family by oral agreement in 1972 and the land was never transferred.

The title deed was in her name throughout. That did not decide the case.

What happened

In about 1972 the appellant's father owned two adjoining plots in Liopetri, 137 and 380. By oral agreement he sold his son-in-law a square of roughly 600 square metres for money: 516 square metres from plot 380 and 85 square metres from the southern side of plot 137, bought for the benefit of the son-in-law's daughter, then a minor. The buyer built a house for her on the land, finished in about 1976, and then a boundary wall at the point the seller showed him, and a garage under a building permit of that year.

In 1979 the seller made two gifts. To his daughter, the appellant, he gave plot 137 as registered, which still included the 85 square metre strip. To his granddaughter he gave part of plot 380. The strip stayed inside the appellant's registered plot, while on the ground it sat behind the neighbours' wall.

Nobody objected for more than thirty years. The dispute began in 2010, after Land Registry officers preparing new plans for the area pointed out that the strip had never been transferred. The appellant sued for trespass, removal of the wall and mesne profits. The neighbours counterclaimed. The Famagusta District Court dismissed her claim and allowed the counterclaim in part, and the Supreme Court dismissed her appeal, with 2,500 euro in costs against her.

Why the registered title did not win

Section 4(1) of the Immovable Property (Tenure, Registration and Valuation) Law, Cap. 224, provides that no interest in immovable property exists, is created, acquired or transferred except under that Law. Section 65IE expects a trust of land to be made in writing and registered. On a first reading, an unwritten, unregistered sale of 1972 should count for nothing.

The Supreme Court restated the long line of Cyprus authority that neither provision excludes resulting or constructive trusts. Section 29(1)(c) of the Courts Law of 1960 brings in the principles of equity, and equity imposes a constructive trust where it would be unconscionable for the legal owner to deny another person's beneficial interest. The court also noted that English law, which Cyprus courts follow here, treats constructive trusts as an exception to its own rule that contracts for land must be in writing.

An oral sale of land, left unregistered for decades, can still bind the registered owner and the person to whom the owner later gives the land.

The requirements are demanding. There must be a common intention that one party will have an interest in the property, both parties must have acted on it, the terms must be clear, and the burden of proof is on the party claiming the land. The court looks particularly at the conduct of the party the arrangement works against. Here that was the wall built where the seller showed, the garage, and decades in which the appellant accepted the neighbours' use of the strip without protest.

The gift did not wash the trust away

Two further arguments failed, and both are ones a property owner would instinctively make.

The first was that she received the land as a gift, in good faith. The court agreed that the donee is bound only if she knew of the trust, and upheld the finding that she did: she knew of circumstances showing it, and her father had told her of the sale himself. Years of silence while the neighbours used the strip supported the same conclusion.

The second was that the written gift deeds of 1979 replaced any earlier oral understanding. The court held that a later agreement discharges an earlier one only where the subject matter is the same and the intention to replace is shown. The gift of plot 380 said nothing about the 1972 sale, and the parties' conduct afterwards showed an intention to honour it.

A third point was procedural. The appellant said the neighbours had pleaded an oral sale and not a constructive trust. The court repeated that pleadings state facts and not legal labels, and that a court may grant the remedy the pleaded facts support.

What the neighbours did not get

The trial court declared that the appellant holds the strip as trustee for the two current owners of the neighbouring plot. It refused to order the strip registered in their names, because that would require plot 137, now renumbered 129, to be divided. It also rejected their alternative claim to a right acquired by hostile possession, since their case was that the strip was already theirs in equity. The Supreme Court upheld the outcome as a whole. The neighbours therefore hold a declaration, not a title deed.

What this means in practice

For anyone buying or inheriting land in a village or family setting, the register is not the whole story. A wall, a garage, a driveway or a fence that does not match the cadastral boundary is a question to ask before completion, and the answer may be an arrangement between parents or grandparents that nobody wrote down. Our property due diligence work includes walking the boundary against the plan for exactly this reason.

For registered owners who find a neighbour on their land, a trespass claim is not a formality. If the occupation began with the consent of a previous owner and was paid for, the claim may produce a declaration against you and an order for costs, as it did here. The first step is to establish how the occupation began, from family members, old building permits and the plans attached to earlier transfers, before issuing anything.

For neighbours relying on an old family arrangement, this judgment helps, but it has a limit. A declaration of beneficial ownership protects possession. It does not put the land in your name, and where registration would require the plot to be divided, the court may refuse to order it. Until the division is done through the Land Registry, the title stays with the other family, and every sale, mortgage and inheritance on that side has to be managed around the trust.

The trap is evidence. Nothing about the 1972 sale was in writing, so the case turned on whose account of it the trial court believed. It rejected the evidence of the registered owner and her husband as unreliable and accepted the neighbours', and the Supreme Court would not interfere with that assessment. Where a family has made an unwritten arrangement about land, the time to regularise it is while the people who made it can still sign. Our property team handles both sides of these disputes.

Questions we are asked

Sources

• Margarita Kermanou v. Maria G. Koutsofta and others, Civil Appeal 209/2017, Supreme Court of Cyprus, 22 September 2026
• The Immovable Property (Tenure, Registration and Valuation) Law, Cap. 224, CyLaw
• The Courts Law of 1960, 14/1960, CyLaw

This article is provided for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.

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