Neighborhood rights as a way to ensure a balance of interests of owners of neighboring real estate

Ensuring a balance of rights and legitimate interests is often indicated, primarily in the acts of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, and the goals of legal regulation common to all types of civil relations. These goals are of particular importance in neighborly relations, which are usually understood as the relations of persons who own neighboring real estate objects. Formed in the prerevolutionary legal order, which has lost its significance in Soviet law, neighborhood law as a legal means of coordinating the private interests of neighboring owners has proved to be in demand in modern Russian realities and has become one of the projected areas of property law reform. In the draft Federal Law No. 47538-6/5 "On Amendments to Part One of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation", neighborhood law, based on the pre-revolutionary tradition, is presented as a restriction (constraint) of property rights in favor of neighbors. The content of these restrictions is, firstly, the obligation of the owner to under- go an impact emanating from a neighboring land plot, "if it does not affect the use of his land plot or has such an impact on its use that does not exceed the established standards, and in their absence - reasonable limits based on the nature and location of the land plots or from custom." Secondly, the owner of the land plot himself is obliged to refrain from carrying out an "unacceptable impact" on the neighbor's land plot, including when building his land plot and exploiting the results of construction. Despite the fact that only two articles (Article 293 and Article 294 of the bill) are devoted to neighborhood rights in the draft law, its implementation in this part will make up for the private legal regulation of neighborhood relations that is missing in our legal order, will have an unconditional positive impact on law enforcement practice. The latter, in the absence of guidelines in the law, has formed stable legal positions that are widely used in resolving numerous neighborhood disputes. They are based on the principle of ensuring a balance of rights and legitimate interests in neighborly relations, which is not legally designated as a general provision, but is actually used by the courts. The "balance of interests" of the owners of neighboring real estate is a guideline in determining the composition of the violation necessary for the use of civil remedies, as well as in determining the consequences of this violation applied by the court. Therefore, the legalization of the principle of ensuring a balance of rights and legitimate interests seems to be the appropriate level of solving the problems existing in the sphere of legal support of neighborhood relations.

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