Someone has taken your property: dispossession or ejectment?

In a dispossession claim the court does not examine ownership. Three things must be shown: that the property was previously in the claimant's possession, that the defendant subsequently took possession, and that they did so without consent and without legal authority.

The advantage is that the claim is available even without registered title — the law protects the existing state of affairs so that nobody can change the facts on the ground by unilateral action. That is why evidence that you were previously in occupation — utility bills, neighbours' testimony, dated photographs — carries particular weight.

A claim in ejectment rests on ownership, and its precondition is registered title in the claimant's name. Where the property has no registered title, or the title stands in someone else's name, ownership generally has to be established first and ejectment sought afterwards.

The result is stronger: a judgment in ejectment settles ownership and the occupier must give the property up. Alongside it you can claim mesne profits for the period of occupation — a fair rent for the time the property was held without right.

Property is not always lost outright. Sometimes someone blocks a right of way, builds on a shared wall, or prevents the exercise of an easement. Here the property remains in your possession and what has been disrupted is your ordinary use of it.

For that situation the law provides claims for removal of interference or obstruction of a right. Bringing an ejectment claim in such a case leads to its dismissal, because your possession was never broken — and that error of labelling is one of the most common reasons property claims fail.

Wrongful occupation can also carry a criminal aspect, provided for in article 690 of the Islamic Penal Code (the discretionary-punishment book). A criminal complaint applies pressure faster and can, in some cases, produce an order halting works and restoring possession.

But it does not replace the civil claim: settling ownership and recovering mesne profits remain matters for the civil court. In serious cases the two routes usually run in parallel, each doing its own work.