The Practice of Recognizing Ownership of an Unauthorized Building When its Demolition Is Refused Due to the Expiration of the Statute of Limitations

Unauthorized construction is a widespread phenomenon in Russia. An analysis of judicial precedents reveals that the prevalence of cases involving the application of Art. 222 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, which governs matters pertaining to unauthorized structures, continues to be substantial. Despite the fact that the legislation of the Russian Federation has undergone many changes, which result is an increasingly detailed regulation of the area under consideration, controversial issues continue to arise in practice. In this regard, this article is devoted to the problem of recognizing the ownership of an unauthorized building in order to include it into civil circulation in the presence of a judicial act of demolishing it due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. 
The purpose of the article is a legal analysis of some gaps in the legislation of the studied area, as well as the identification of proposed ways to implement fair legal regulation in the context of the problem. The authors underscore the unacceptability of both refusals to grant a request for the demolition of an unauthorized construction and to recognition of ownership rights to it, as such a course of action fails to resolve the issue of the legal status of the contested object of unlawful construction.
The work uses general scientific and private research methods: logical, dialectical, sociological, comparative legal, etc. The use of these methods made it possible to investigate problematic issues of the institution of unauthorized construction, as well as procedural aspects of recognizing ownership of an unauthorized building, demolition of an unauthorized building.
Based on the results of the article, a possible way to overcome this problem is proposed, aimed at observing the principle of legal certainty.