Short answer. Two things, and the second one surprises people: you must identify the property precisely, and you must prove your own title is strong. Article 434 will not let you win by attacking the occupant's claim. If your evidence of ownership is weak, the occupant stays even where their claim is weaker.

What the law says

the property must be identified, and the plaintiff must rely on the strength of his title and not on the weakness of the defendant's claim

Civil Code, Article 434 — Requisites to Recover Property. Read the full provision →

Identity means the technical description, not the address

The first requisite sounds trivial and is not. That the property must be identified means the land you sued over and the land the occupant is on must be shown to be the same land, by its boundaries and its technical description, rather than by a street address or by whatever the lot is called locally. Where lots adjoin, where a subdivision plan was amended, or where a fence has stood in the wrong place for thirty years, this is genuinely contested ground. A relocation survey by a licensed geodetic engineer, plotted against the technical description in the title, is what usually closes the gap.

Strength of your title, not weakness of theirs

This is the sentence that decides most of these cases and the one owners least expect. You must rely on the strength of his title and not on the weakness of the defendant's claim. Showing that the occupant has no deed, no title and no receipts does not win. The court is not comparing two claims and picking the better one; it is asking whether you have proved yours. An owner who arrives with a compelling account of why the occupant's papers are fake, and nothing solid establishing their own chain of ownership, loses the case, and the occupant remains exactly where they are.

What counts as proof of title

In practice: the certificate of title in your name, the deed or other instrument by which you acquired the property, and the chain running back through the previous registered owners. Tax declarations and tax receipts are not title, but they support a claim of ownership, and for untitled land they may be most of what exists. Where the property came by inheritance, how the estate was settled and how the property was allocated becomes central, because an heir's undivided share in an unsettled estate is a very different thing from sole ownership of one identified lot.

Where these cases are actually lost

Before filing, get a certified true copy of the title from the registry and a relocation survey, and reconstruct honestly how the occupant came to be there. Article 434 sets what you must prove; how long they have possessed and on what basis decides which action you bring and whether you still can. Owners routinely discover at this stage that the title is still in a deceased parent's name, that the technical description does not match the fence, or that a sibling's share was never partitioned out. Each of those is fixable, and fixing it before filing costs a fraction of fixing it after.

Cases citing this provision

These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.

Related provisions

Note. Statute text quoted on this page is reproduced from the official enactment and is linked to the full provision. The explanation around it is general legal information from Vivas & Nobles Law Office, not legal advice. Whether it applies to your situation depends on facts only a lawyer reviewing them can assess.