Property Preservation Measures
After accepting the entrustment, the first thing for a lawyer to consider is whether to start the proceedings of property preservation. There are a few things to be aware of for pre-litigation property preservation procedures in divorce cases:
There are some differences between the procedure of property preservation during litigation and procedure of pre-litigation property preservation procedure. According to the provisions of civil procedure law, the competent court for pre-litigation property preservation is the court where the property is located, but in practice, the court competent for the divorce case may not be the same as the court suitable for pre-litigation preservation. For example, if we applied for the pre-litigation property preservation in the Puxi, but the competent court for the case is in f Pudong, the problem is that the court where the property is located may not be willing to accept such application as they don’t have the proper jurisdiction over the case other than the part of pre-litigation preservation. The lawyer should find a way to make sure some property is located in Pudong first so that Pudong will have the jurisdiction of the property preservation and once the court in Pudong has jurisdiction over one piece of property the court will have collateral power over the rest of the property for pre-litigation property preservation.
Generally, for property preservation application, the client shall pay a processing fee and deposit. In practice, an experienced lawyer may just use another system under property law to file for “dissenting registration” with the local real estate bureau to prevent any transaction of the title of real property for the same effects of property preservation with respect to real estate. The approach of filing for “dissenting registration” is used more often to avoid legal costs and complicated property preservation procedure. However, for other properties, such as tangible properties, the client will have to follow the traditional procedure property preservation.
