For those of you from overseas who have been purchasing land  in Dominica over the last year you will have been perplexed and I am sure confused by the varying interpretations given to the Alien Land Holding Licence Regulation Provisions both as between lawyers and Government web sites of the requirement to pay fees  between lawyers and Government.

The Act is designed to regulate the holding of lands in Dominica by foreigners or “Aliens” as they are affectionately known. These are people who are not citizens of Dominica or an OECS  (Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States ) country.

For years the legislation  has been interpreted in different ways by Government Agencies as well as lawyers because of the vague wording in the Act.

If as an Alien you wish to purchase above one acre of land for residential or three acres for business you must apply to Government for An Alien Land Holding License. In my opinion this limit applies once and for all. One could not buy one acre for residential and then subsequently purchase half an acre without a License.

Many lawyers believed that because of the ambiguous wording of the Act and the fact that no license is required below these figures no fee was payable.

Towards the middle of last year  the Government insisted that to obtain Title the  Alien Land Holding License Fees had to be paid   regardless of how much land was being bought otherwise Title would not be issued.This meant that even if you purchased only 500 sq ft of land you had to pay the fees.

We advised all of our clients that they had to pay in accordance with what was happening in the Registry. Some persons chose to wait , the majority of persons paid. At that time there was no suggestion that any-one who did not pay the fees would obtain Title.

On January 10th 2008 Government brought in amending legislation to make clear that these fees were payable.   This legislation was the Aliens  Land Holding  Regulation (Amendment ) Act . Nothing was said in the legislation as to what would happen to those Titles in The Registry before the legislation came into force.

We all had some difficult cases where documents had been in the Registry for a lengthy period of time in one case 16 months and the documents had not been placed in out of order .  Out of the blue Government advised that those  clients whose papers were in the Registry before the Act came into force would not have to pay. That has of course created confusion. It means that all those persons whose papers were in the Registry before 10th of January 2008 but who had to pay to get their Title should be re-imbursed because  there was no legal basis on which to charge.

As of this date we have written to Government accordingly and await the response.