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Land & Property Law in Mauritius
A civil-law property system on an island where land is scarce and contested: notarial transfers, layered ownership schemes, foreign-buyer regimes, and some of the longest-running litigation in the jurisdiction.
The statutory backbone
- Code Civil Mauricien: ownership, co-ownership (indivision), usufruct, servitudes, prescription, and sale, the civil-law foundations of all Mauritian property practice.
- Notarial system: transfers of immovable property pass through a notary's authenticated deed and registration; the notarial profession is a distinct branch of Mauritian legal practice.
- Registration and land-duty legislation: the registration machinery and the duties and taxes that attach to transfers.
- Non-Citizens (Property Restriction) Act: the gatekeeper for foreign ownership: non-citizens generally require authorisation to acquire immovable property.
- Investment schemes for foreign buyers: the Economic Development Board administers schemes (such as the Property Development Scheme and its predecessors IRS/RES, and Smart City provisions) through which non-citizens may acquire qualifying residential property.
What the case law keeps deciding
- Co-ownership and partition. Indivision disputes among heirs, often spanning generations, and the machinery for exiting them.
- Prescription. Acquisitive prescription claims and the evidential burdens of long possession.
- Boundary and servitude disputes. Rights of way, access to landlocked plots (enclave), and surveyor evidence.
- Sale disputes. Promesse de vente, defects of consent, and the remedies when a transfer goes wrong.
- Succession and property. The interaction of forced heirship (réserve héréditaire) with lifetime dispositions of land.
Property research reaches deeper into the past than any other practice area; chains of title and prescription arguments routinely require 19th-century authority, which is why corpus depth matters.
Researching property law with AI
Title and prescription questions are archival by nature. Themis searches judgments back to the 1800s alongside the Code Civil and modern statutes in a single query, in French or English, and returns cited authority. That research pattern used to mean days in the archives.
Research property law in minutes
Themis is in private beta with Mauritian practitioners. Every answer cited to the Code, Act, or judgment it comes from.
Request Early Access →General information, not legal advice. For advice on a specific matter, consult a member of the Mauritian bar or a notary. Explore more topics in the Mauritius Law Hub.