Two sentences decide most Montenegrin land purchases, and they are rarely in the contract.
The first: the neighbours have always driven across here. The second: there is nothing about it in the folio. Both can be true at the same time, and what follows from them is not obvious — because a right of way in Montenegro can exist without being registered, can bind you or fail to bind you depending on when you bought, and can die quietly after three years of disuse.
This page is about that layer. Our land purchase guide tells you to read the G list and warns that a dirt track used in practice is not a registered službenost. That is the correct warning. This page is the other half of it: what the law does about a plot that has no lawful access, and what an existing servitude actually is.
Where a servitude lives in the file — and what the entry does not tell you
The real-estate folio (list nepokretnosti) is built in named sections. Under Article 53 of the Zakon o državnom premjeru i katastru nepokretnosti: A is the land parcel, B is the rightholder on it, V is buildings and separate units with their rightholders, V – part 1 is vodovi (utility lines) and their rightholders, and G is charges and restrictions.
Article 78 puts real and personal servitudes, mortgage and sub-mortgage, leases and concessions longer than five years, pre-emption rights and prohibitions on alienation and encumbrance into that G list.
Article 79 then says three things worth knowing before you read one:
- A real servitude is registered twice: as a right of the dominant estate (povlasno dobro) and as a burden on the servient estate (poslužno dobro). If you are buying the burdened land, the burden should be visible on your own folio — not only on the neighbour's.
- Servitude rights are registered with the content and scope of the right, without stating any monetary value. So the entry will not tell you what it was worth, or what was paid.
- Where the exercise of the right is spatially limited, the spatial boundaries must be precisely determined — and they count as precisely determined only if drawn in a sketch (*skica*) attached to the document on which registration was requested.
That last point is the practical one. "Right of passage" as a bare line in the G list, with no sketch behind it, tells you that something exists but not where it runs. Ask for the document the entry was based on, and look for the sketch.
The three ways a servitude comes into being
Article 201: a real servitude is created by legal transaction, by a decision of a court or another state authority, and by prescription (*održaj*). The court decides unless a special law puts it with another authority.
By agreement (Article 202). The servitude is acquired by registration in the cadastre, or in another manner the law provides. The contract itself must be in writing and certified by the competent authority or a notary. A handshake with the neighbour is not a servitude; nor is an unregistered signed paper — that is a claim to registration, not the right itself.
By decision (Article 206). A court or state authority establishes a servitude when the owner of the dominant estate cannot use it, wholly or in part, without appropriate use of the servient estate, and in other cases the law provides. It is acquired on the day the decision becomes final (pravosnažnost), unless the law says otherwise.
By prescription — which is where most surprises live.
The track that has been used for twenty years
Article 203 sets out three different periods, and they are not alternatives you get to pick:
- 20 years — where the owner of the dominant estate has in fact exercised the servitude and the owner of the servient estate did not oppose it.
- 10 years — for a conscientious and lawful possessor of the servitude.
- 15 years — on the basis of conscientious possession.
And an exclusion that decides real cases: a servitude cannot be acquired by prescription where it was exercised through abuse of the trust of the owner or possessor of the servient estate, by force, by fraud, or where the servitude was granted revocably (do opoziva). The neighbour who was told "of course, use it for now" has been given a revocable permission, and revocable permission does not ripen into a right.
Article 204 narrows it further: only visible servitudes can be acquired by prescription, and a servitude is visible if its existence is accompanied by some external visible sign. A worn track, a gate, a culvert, a pole — something on the ground.
Then Article 205, which is the one that matters when you are the buyer:
A real servitude acquired by prescription may be asserted against a third conscientious person from the moment of registration in the cadastre.
Read that in both directions.
If you are buying the servient land, an unregistered prescriptive servitude is not automatically good against you — provided you are a conscientious third party. That is the legal substance behind the advice to trust the folio.
If you are buying the dominant land because it has "always had access", the position is worse than it looks. An unregistered prescriptive right may be perfectly real between the old neighbours and still not be assertable against the person who buys the other side next year. Access that depends on an unregistered servitude is access with an expiry date attached to the neighbour's next sale.
If your plot has no road: the necessary passage
Article 215 is the remedy for the plot that is landlocked, and it is more structured than most buyers expect.
An owner who has no exit to a public road, or can reach one only by excessive detour — enclosed land, an enclave — has the right to demand that, against payment of compensation, passage over another's land be allowed. That is the nužni prolaz.
It can be established as a right of passage for pedestrians, carts, motor vehicles, agricultural machinery and the like. So the question is never only "is there a right of way" but "for what".
Then five rules that decide how it works out in practice.
The subdivision trap. Where the enclave came about by division, the necessary passage may be allowed only over the land that formed a single whole with the enclave before that division. If a large coastal parcel was split into lots and yours ended up behind the others, you cannot reach across to whichever neighbour is most convenient. You are confined to the parent parcel's footprint — and if that route is built over or hostile, that is the route the law points you at.
Least harm. The holder of the right can be ordered to take measures ensuring the crossing happens in conditions least harmful to the property crossed. Where the argument is about where the boundary itself runs rather than about passage across it, that is a different procedure — see boundary and survey disputes.
House and yard. A necessary passage cannot be established over a house and yard, except where there is no other exit to a public road.
The owner's counter-moves. The burdened owner may require the holder to buy the part of the property that serves as the passage. And where circumstances change, the owner may require that the passage be exercised at another place on the same property.
It can be abolished. If a new public road is built, or the reasons otherwise cease, the burdened owner may demand that the right be abolished — and must then return part of the compensation received, as assessed by the court.
What the burdened owner is paid
Article 208 is short and often ignored by the party asking for the right.
The owner of the servient estate has a right to compensation for the established servitude. If the two owners do not agree on it, the court determines the amount on the servient owner's application, taking account of all the circumstances and in particular the loss the servient owner suffers in the form of lost benefit (*izmakla korist*) and in the form of the reduced value of the servient estate.
Two things follow. Compensation is not a courtesy payment for inconvenience; it is measured partly by what the burden does to the value of the land. And it is the servient owner who applies to have it set — so a dominant owner who takes the passage and pays nothing has not saved money, only postponed the valuation.
Utility lines across your land
Article 216 handles pipes and cables. A landowner is obliged, against compensation, to allow the placing on their land of water and sewage pipes, gas pipelines, electrical and telephone cables, poles, wires and the like, if placing them elsewhere would require disproportionate costs.
The landowner is not merely a bystander in that arrangement:
- Where the use value of the land is substantially reduced, the owner may require the owner of the lines to buy that part.
- The owner may relocate the lines at their own expense to another place on the same property, provided the conditions for using the lines are not worsened there.
- Where relocation is sought because changed circumstances have made use of the land disproportionately difficult, the owner may ask that the cost of relocation be borne, wholly or partly, by the owner of the lines — and the court weighs all the circumstances, in particular how much time has passed since the lines were placed.
Article 217 covers the other route: placing lines and other installations on someone else's property without the owner's consent is possible in the public interest, in accordance with law.
Remember that utility lines have their own folio section — V – part 1 under Article 53. A plot with a line across it may show that in a different place from the G list.
How a servitude dies
Three provisions, and each of them can be the answer to "we thought we had access".
Article 209 — disuse against opposition. A real servitude ends if the owner of the servient estate opposes its exercise and the owner of the dominant estate has not exercised the right for three consecutive years. It also ends if it is not exercised for the period needed to acquire it by prescription, when the same person becomes owner of both estates, or on the destruction of either.
Three years is short. A holiday plot whose owner visits rarely, and a neighbour who starts objecting, is the standard fact pattern.
Article 210 — it became unnecessary. The servient owner may demand that the servitude cease when it has become unnecessary for the use of the dominant estate, or when the other reason it was established for has ceased.
Article 211 — changed circumstances. The servient owner may, against fair compensation, demand that the servitude cease if, because of changed circumstances, its benefit to the dominant estate has become disproportionate to the burden it represents for the servient estate. The servient owner may waive that right — but for at most 10 years. In setting the compensation the court considers all the circumstances, in particular how long the servitude lasted and how much its abolition gains for the servient estate and costs the dominant one.
Article 199 sits behind all of this: a servitude is exercised in the manner that least burdens the servient estate, and new needs of the dominant estate that are not the consequence of its normal development and use do not affect the scope of the right. A passage granted for a farm track does not become a delivery route for a hotel because the dominant owner changed their plans.
Windows, light and view
Article 219 is small and settles a common argument. The right of a window in the wall of the servient estate gives the owner of the dominant estate only the right to light and air — and to view only where that authority has been specially given. A person who has no right of view must, on the request of the owner of the wall, put a grille on their window. A person who has the right of window must keep the opening in order, and is liable for damage caused by neglecting it. Noise, smoke and similar interference from next door is a separate test again, covered in neighbour and common-area disputes.
What to check before you buy
- Read the G list on the parcel you are buying — and remember Article 79: if the land is burdened, the burden should appear on your folio, not only the neighbour's.
- For every servitude entry, ask for the document it was registered on, and look for the sketch. Without it the scope is a sentence, not a line on the ground.
- Check the V – part 1 section for utility lines.
- If access runs over someone else's land and nothing is registered, treat access as absent for pricing purposes, and establish which route the law would actually give you — under Article 215 that is decided by the parcel's division history, not by convenience.
- If access exists but is rarely used, ask when it was last used and whether anyone has objected. Article 209 runs on three years.
- If you are told the neighbour "has permission", find out whether it was given revocably. Under Article 203 that permission never becomes a right.
Whose side we are on, and how we are paid
RoNa Legal DOO works for owners and buyers, not for developers, agents or sellers. We are paid by the client we act for, and by no one else in the transaction — we take no commission, referral fee or share of any contract we review.
Work that requires representation before a Montenegrin court or state authority is carried out by an advocate admitted to the Montenegrin Bar. Our own role is the preparatory and advisory layer: reading the folio and the documents behind each G-list entry, reconstructing the parcel's division history to see what Article 215 would actually allow, and preparing the file the advocate uses.
If you have already bought
If you own a plot whose access is disputed, the first two facts are the division history of the parcel and what is registered on both folios — yours and the land the access crosses. Send us the list nepokretnosti for both, and the documents behind any servitude entry, and we will tell you whether you are arguing about an existing right, a prescriptive claim, or a necessary passage that has to be established from scratch.
If someone is crossing your land without a registered right, the questions are how long, whether you opposed it, and whether the permission was revocable.
