This is not the article about scams. We have one of those, and if you think someone is deliberately deceiving you, that is the one to read.
This is the more common and much less dramatic problem: the seller is honest, the agent is honest, the extract from the register appears to name the seller, everyone is acting in good faith — and the sale still cannot lawfully complete, or completes into something other than what the buyer thought they were getting.
Nobody is lying. The seller simply is not, in law, the person who can transfer the whole of that property. Here are the three ways that happens.
First principle: the register transfers ownership, not the contract
Everything below rests on one rule, so it is worth stating plainly.
Under the Zakon o svojinsko-pravnim odnosima — "Sl. list CG" br. 19/2009 — Article 84 provides that ownership of immovable property acquired on the basis of a legal transaction is acquired by registration in the cadastre. The contract creates obligations between the parties. It does not, by itself, make you the owner.
That cuts both ways, and the second way is the one buyers forget. If registration is what transfers ownership, then a person who has not been registered is not the owner yet — however genuine their claim, however long they have lived there, and however sincerely they offer to sell.
The spouse rule, which is stranger than anyone expects
This is the provision I would put in front of every foreign buyer in Montenegro, because it contradicts the thing they are relying on most: the name on the extract.
Under the Porodični zakon — "Sl. list RCG" br. 1/2007 and "Sl. list CG" br. 53/2016, 76/2020 — Article 289 deals with how spouses' joint property is registered. It requires such property to be registered in the names of both spouses, as joint property with undetermined shares. And then it says this:
If only one spouse is registered in the property register as owner of joint property, it shall be deemed that the registration was made in the names of both spouses — unless the registration was made on the basis of a written agreement concluded between the spouses.
Read that twice. A single name on the extract does not establish a single owner. If the asset is joint marital property, the law treats the register as if it named both of them, whatever it actually says on the page in your hand.
Article 290 completes the trap: a spouse may neither dispose of nor encumber their share in undivided joint property by a transaction between the living. Not sell it, not mortgage it, not pledge it.
So the sequence that catches people is entirely mundane. The extract shows one name. The buyer reasonably concludes there is one owner. The seller, who is not deceiving anyone, may genuinely think of the flat as "his" or "hers" because that is whose name is on it. And the person who can stop the transaction is not in the room and has not been asked.
There is a lawful way for the position to be different — Article 301 allows spouses to regulate their property relations by a marital contract (bračni ugovor). That contract must be in writing and notarised, the notary is obliged to read it to them and warn them that it excludes the statutory joint-property regime, and where it concerns immovable property it is registered in the property register. There is also Article 292, under which spouses may agree that one of them manages and disposes of the joint property.
Which gives you the practical question, and it is a short one: is this joint marital property, and if the answer is no, what document says so? A marital contract or a written agreement between the spouses is a document. A shrug is not.
And it may not require a marriage at all
One more turn of the same screw, which foreign buyers essentially never anticipate.
Under Article 12 of the Porodični zakon, a cohabiting union (vanbračna zajednica) that has lasted three years is equated with marriage in respect of the right to mutual support and other property-law relations. That period is not required where a child has been born of the union, or where the union has continued into a marriage. The provision does not apply where, at the time the union was formed, there were impediments to concluding a valid marriage.
So "they are not married" is not, by itself, the answer to the question in the previous section. The status that matters for property is not only the one recorded at the registry office, and it is not something you can read off an extract. It is one more reason the question belongs to the person doing your review rather than to your own guesswork about someone else's private life.
The heirs who were never registered
The second pattern follows directly from Article 84.
Someone dies. The family knows perfectly well who inherited. Everyone in the village knows. The estate may even have been formally decided. But nobody completed the registration, so the register still names a person who is dead.
Years later a member of the family agrees to sell. They are not misrepresenting anything — in their mind they inherited it, and they may well be right. But the person the register recognises as owner is the deceased, and the transfer you are asking for has to run from a registered owner.
This is fixable and it is routine. What it is not is quick, and it is not something to discover in completion week — particularly when the heirs are several, live in different countries, and do not all agree that selling is a good idea. If the extract names someone who is not the person across the table from you, the estate has to be resolved and registered before the sale can be what you think it is.
I set out what happens to a Montenegrin property on death, and why an EU certificate does not travel, separately.
The co-owner selling more than their share
The third pattern is the most technical and the easiest to walk into, because the paperwork looks fine.
Under Article 132 of the Zakon o svojinsko-pravnim odnosima, a co-owner may dispose of their own share without the consent of the other co-owners. That sounds permissive, and it is — but note precisely what it permits. It permits disposal of their share. It does not permit one co-owner to sell the whole thing.
The same article attaches a gate to that freedom: where a co-ownership share is sold, the other co-owners have a right of pre-emption. The share must be offered to them first, and a sale to a third party may proceed if they do not take it up within the period the law allows — 10 days.
Two consequences for a buyer:
- If you are buying from one of several co-owners and the contract describes "the apartment", you are being sold something the seller may not be able to convey in full. What you can actually acquire is their fraction.
- Even where you are correctly buying a share, there is a procedural step that belongs to other people and that has to be respected before your purchase is safe. Skipping it does not make the sale faster. It makes it contestable.
What this looks like on the extract
| What you see | What it may actually be | What to ask for |
|---|---|---|
| One name as owner | joint marital property deemed registered to both spouses (Art. 289) | marital contract or written spousal agreement — or the other spouse at the notary |
| A name you cannot match to the seller | an estate that was never registered (Art. 84) | the succession decision and the registration that follows it |
| A fractional share (e.g. 1/3) | co-ownership; the seller can convey their part only (Art. 132) | evidence the pre-emption right of the other co-owners has been dealt with |
| Everything looks clean | it may well be | the extract on the day of signing, not the one from three months ago |
Good faith is a defence, not a plan
There is protection in Montenegrin law for an acquirer who relied on the register in good faith, and it matters. But it is the argument you make after something has gone wrong, in front of someone else, at your cost and on their timetable. It is the reason litigation exists rather than a reason to skip diligence, and the contours of it are the subject of the scam and recourse piece.
The cheaper move is to make sure the question never has to be argued: get an extract dated the day you sign, and satisfy yourself that everyone whose signature the property needs is actually going to sign.
A note on how current this is
The provisions above are cited from the consolidated texts as I could verify them on 19 August 2026: the Zakon o svojinsko-pravnim odnosima at "Sl. list CG" 19/2009, and the Porodični zakon at "Sl. list RCG" 1/2007 with amendments at "Sl. list CG" 53/2016 and 76/2020.
Consolidated collections of Montenegrin legislation lag, sometimes by years, and I have been caught by that before on other statutes. The articles here are the ones to work from, but if a transaction turns on the precise wording, have the current gazette text checked rather than relying on an article — including this one.
The arithmetic
None of these three defects is exotic and none is expensive to detect. A spousal question is one question. An estate that was never registered is visible the moment you compare the name on the extract with the name of the person selling. A fractional share is written on the extract as a fraction.
What is expensive is the other order of events: completing, paying, and then discovering that the transfer cannot be registered, or can be registered only as to part — at which point your money has moved and your leverage has not. Add that a transfer of ownership is itself a taxable event in Montenegro, so unwinding is not free even when everyone cooperates.
And if the plan is to litigate: under Montenegro's advocates' tariff, the costs a court awards are set by the tariff and are not tied to what you actually paid your own lawyer. Winning is not being made whole.
What to send, and when
Before signing anything, send the current extract for the unit, the name and status of the person proposing to sell, and — if it is relevant — whether they are married and whether the property was acquired during the marriage. That last question feels intrusive and it is the single most useful one on the list.
RoNa Legal advises foreign clients on Montenegrin law; representation before Montenegrin authorities and courts is conducted together with advocates entered in the register of the Bar Association of Montenegro. We don't take commission from sellers, agents or developers on property transactions — our fee is for the review. See our services or reach us through contact. Related: reading a Montenegrin title extract, the agency form you sign first, and signing from abroad by power of attorney.
