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Doing Business in Brazil - Looseleaf
Doing Business in Brazil - Electronic
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A. MOVABLES AND IMMOVABLES
12.101 Brazilian law divides properties into two broad categories, movables and immovables. Movables are properties which are capable of movement by themselves or by some external force, without change in substance or in its economic and social purposes. Energies with an economic value, rights in rem over movable properties and actions to enforce those rights, and the personal rights of a property nature and respective claims are also movable property. Building materials are movable property until they are incorporated into a building, and they revert to being movable property after the demolition of the building in which they were used. Immovable property comprises land and all things naturally and artificially attached to it.
12.102 This definition was restricted by the present Constitution, which provides that mines and other produce from the subsoil and waterfalls constitute, for exploitation and usage purposes, property distinct from the land. The exploitation of mineral resources and hydroelectric power requires federal authorization or license.
12.103 Both mines and water are governed by special legislation. The Mining Code states that mineral deposits are immovable properties distinct and separate from the land. Ownership of the land implies ownership of the subsoil, but does not include mineral or fossil substances with industrial applications. The Water Code provides that waterfalls and other sources of hydroelectric power are immovable properties the ownership of which is distinct and separate from that of the land where they are situated.
12.104 Accession relates to whatever is naturally or artificially incorporated into or united with one’s own property: rights of alluvion, avulsion, constructions, cultivated areas, adjunction, commixtion, confusion, specification. Accessions are not viewed as improvements.
Pinheiro Neto - Advogados, established in 1942, is Brazil's leading commercial law firm with offices in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia. The founding Editor of this publication, the late J.M. Pinheiro Neto, was the Legal Advisor to the British Chamber of Commerce in Brazil.
