The situation
The couple had been married since 1990, but from 2019 they no longer lived together or shared a household. They never divorced.
In April 2023 our client and her adult son bought a house in Tashkent with their own money and rebuilt it. In January 2024 her husband died, leaving his property by will to his sister, who then claimed a share of the house because it had been bought during the marriage.
What we did
Under Article 23 of the Family Code, property acquired during marriage is joint. Article 27 allows an exception: once family relations have ended, property one spouse acquires while living apart may be recognised as that spouse’s own. That is what had to be proved.
We presented the purchase documents, the sources of the money, the husband’s notarised statement of 2021 and evidence that the spouses lived apart. The decisive evidence came from a detail the client mentioned almost in passing: in the file of an earlier police inquiry, the other side’s own relatives had described years of living apart, which contradicted the position they took in court.
The result
On 6 January 2025 the Mirabad Interdistrict Civil Court granted the claim: the 232.98 m² house was recognised as our client’s own property. The judgment expressly relied on the police materials as proof of the couple’s long separation.
According to the client, the other side did not appeal.
Based on a real case; our clients’ personal details are not disclosed. Every case is different: the outcome of one dispute does not guarantee the same decision in another.