Assets are a set of monetarily appraisable rights and obligations that a person has. Assets include all things owned by a person, including movables and immovables, all rights, including intellectual property rights and rights of claim, as well as other benefits as long as they are monetarily appraisable. In addition, assets include all liabilities of the person, including obligations arising from limited real rights (servitudes, rights of security, etc.), statutory maintenance obligations, obligations arising from a claim for payment of money corresponding to the creditor’s right of claim, obligations arising from contracts and other obligations, etc.
Ownership is the person’s full legal power over the matter. The owner has the constitutional right to freely own, use, and dispose of property, and to require all other persons to avoid violating their rights and eliminate the consequences of the violation. The rights of the owner are limited only by the rights or general interests of others or by specific statutory restrictions.
Immovables and movables
An immovable is a delimited part of the land or a plot of land. Essential elements of an immovable include items permanently connected to it, such as buildings, standing crop, other plants, and uncut harvest. All things other than immovables and parts of immovables are treated as movables.
Ownership is created either intentionally, i.e. transactionally, or independently, i.e. legally. In the case of a legal acquisition, ownership does not arise from the transaction.
Movable property ownership arises from the transfer of movable property, where the transferor transfers ownership of the thing to the transferee and they have agreed that the ownership passes to the transferee. In order to create immovable property ownership, it is necessary to enter into a notarised real right agreement and make an entry in the land register. The real right agreement for the transfer of immovable property ownership may be included in a court decision instead of a notarised document.
Transactions whereby the person undertakes to become the owner of an immovable or undertakes to transfer the immovable shall also be notarised.
Joint and common ownership
One person or several persons at a time can have ownership. If several people have ownership at the same time, it is a shared ownership. Shared ownership is a generic concept that can take the form of joint ownership or common ownership. This depends in particular on whether the shares in the shared ownership are fixed or not.
In the case of joint ownership, the ownership is owned by several persons at the same time and the legal shares are not defined. The most widespread type of joint ownership is that of spouses.
In the case of common ownership, two or more persons simultaneously have ownership determined in the legal shares in a shared thing. The shares of common ownership can be equal (e.g. ½ and ½) or in different sizes (1/3 and 2/3). The size of the shares in common ownership is important because it affects, in particular, the distribution of the crops involved, the bearing of the duties and the costs, but also the distribution of the thing in the event of termination of the common ownership.
Common ownership also applies to apartment ownership. Apartment ownership is a special ownership of a real part of a building connected to the legal share of the common ownership of the immovable to which the special ownership belongs. Thus, apartment owners are also co-owners of the respective immovable and parts of the immovable which are not real parts of the building.
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is the right to the result of people’s creative work. Intellectual property can be divided into three types:
- copyright (literary, artistic, and scientific works)
- rights related to copyright (rights of the performer, phonogram producer, broadcaster, and so-called new rights under European Union directives, e.g., for the maker of a database)
- industrial property (trademarks, patents, utility models, layout-designs of integrated circuits, industrial designs, etc.).
Right of ownership can be extinguished either voluntarily or involuntarily. Voluntary extinguishment occurs when the owner transfers or abandons the thing. Unintentional extinguishment of ownership may take place under an act of state authority (expropriation, confiscation, sale in enforcement proceedings).
Possession, use, and disposal
Possession means actual control over the thing. Actual control presupposes that the thing is spatially accessible to the possessor so that the person can use the thing personally or through another person at will. Possession can be both direct and indirect. Indirect possession is, for example, the case of a lease contract where the tenant is in direct possession and the owner is the indirect owner. Although the owner may not always have actual control over the thing, they remain the owner and have the right to claim the thing. The owner has the right to use their thing, which essentially means consuming the useful properties of the thing and reaping the fruits of the thing. Consumption of beneficial properties means, inter alia, the right to decide on the use of the beneficial properties obtained.
Disposal means determining the legal status of the thing, i.e. the owner may transfer or encumber the thing with real rights (e.g. pledge, right of superficies).