A COURT in Luohu District ruled that 70 percent of the property rights of an unclaimed apartment in Luohu District should be owned by the State after the municipal judicial department applied to start judicial confirmation procedures, the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported recently.

In September 2017, the legal advisory office of the Shenzhen Municipal Judicial Bureau found that an apartment in a housing estate in Luohu District was suspected of being ownerless.

The office learned after an investigation that the apartment used to belong to a man surnamed Cai who had no children. Cai was looked after by his niece in old age until he passed away.

Cai’s niece filed a lawsuit to the Luohu court and demanded that she be granted the ownership of the property. Considering that she had fulfilled her duty of helping Cai and handled his funeral affairs, the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court decided that Cai’s niece receive 30 percent of the property rights and the remaining 70 percent went unowned, according to the Daily report.

According to China’s inheritance law, an inheritance that is neither inherited nor bequeathed shall be owned by the State.

On Jan. 2, 2018, the legal advisory office, on behalf of the Shenzhen Municipal Government, filed an application for the ownerless property to the Luohu District People’s Court in accordance with the law, the report said.

A public notice of property claim was released by the Luohu court Feb. 1, 2018.

As the property remained unclaimed after a year, on Feb. 20, 2019, the court decided that 70 percent of the apartment’s property rights shall be nationalized.

(Zhang Yu)