Judicial Operation and Institutional Dilemmas of China’s Statutory Habitation Right

Abstract

Five years have passed since China’s Civil Code incorporated the institution of habitation right. As a new type of usufruct transplanted from civil law usus habitandi, this right has undergone a complete transformation from statutory provisions to localized judicial practice. Based on judgment samples retrieved from China Judgments Online and typical cases released by the Supreme People’s Court, this paper sorts out the temporal evolution, regional distribution and case category structure of disputes over habitation right in the past five years, and systematically summarizes judicial logic adopted by courts in confirming rights, resolving multi-party conflicts and providing civil remedies. The study finds that grassroots courts flexibly adjust statutory rules in response to local housing demands, expand valid ways to establish habitation right, and distinguish contractual creditor effect from real right effect generated by registration, thus forming a judicial paradigm balancing subsistence security and real estate transaction security. Nevertheless, several structural dilemmas emerge in practice, including inconsistent judicial standards across regions, insufficient normative provisions for special scenarios, disconnection between real estate registration and judicial enforcement, and lack of regulatory channels for sham habitation rights. From the perspective of localized legal transplantation, this paper analyzes the root causes of deviations between legislative expectations and judicial practice, proposes coordinated improvement measures from judicial unification, administrative supporting systems and prevention of right abuse, and summarizes China’s experience of transplanted property rights to provide empirical materials for comparative property law research.