Discussing the invalid land use rights transfer contract due to "mistake, forgery" in civil transactions

Discussing the invalid land use rights transfer contract due to “mistake, forgery” in civil transactions

09/17/2025 08:31

The article presents a situation to discuss the invalid land use rights transfer contract due to “mistake, forgery” in civil transactions.

1. Some general issues on civil transactions
Civil law, through changes and supplements, has stipulated the concept of civil transactions. Article 116 of the 2015 Civil Code (CC) stipulates civil transactions as follows: “A civil transaction is a contract or unilateral legal act that creates, changes or terminates civil rights and obligations”. Article 385 of the CC stipulates the concept of a civil contract: “A contract is an agreement between the parties on the establishment, change or termination of civil rights and obligations”. Thus, a civil transaction is a civil contract or a unilateral legal act that creates, changes or terminates civil rights and obligations.

In reality, there are many reasons for invalid civil transactions as stipulated from Article 123 to Article 129 of the 2015 Civil Code, based on each dispute situation, the legal provisions are used to declare civil transactions invalid. However, in reality, determining invalid civil transactions performed by illiterate people to base on appropriate legal provisions to resolve them is an extremely difficult problem.

In a situation where society is increasingly developing, disputes are increasingly diverse, and disputes requesting the declaration of land use rights transfer contracts (LURs) invalid due to mistakes or forgery are becoming more and more complicated.

2. Civil contracts invalid due to mistakes
In reality, due to various reasons, lawsuits requesting the declaration of LURs transfer contracts are increasingly numerous, for many reasons. Therefore, to ensure the right to request the Court to protect their legitimate rights and interests; the law stipulates in which cases civil transactions are due to mistakes.

According to the provisions of Article 126 of the 2015 Civil Code, the law only stipulates in general terms:

“1. In cases where a civil transaction is established with a mistake that causes one or more parties to fail to achieve the purpose of establishing the transaction, the mistaken party has the right to request the Court to declare the civil transaction invalid, except for the case specified in Clause 2 of this Article.

2. A civil transaction established with a mistake is not invalid in cases where the purpose of establishing the civil transaction of the parties has been achieved or the parties can immediately correct the mistake so that the purpose of establishing the civil transaction is still achieved”.

The law does not specifically stipulate which cases are considered mistakes, the assessment of the mistake element depends on the nature of each specific civil case and is considered and subjectively assessed by each agency conducting the proceedings.

However, if we expand the connotation, invalid civil transactions due to mistakes may be that the person performing the transaction made a mistake because they themselves are illiterate, but trust their relatives so they participated in signing civil transactions, including land use rights transfer contracts, without knowing which civil transactions affected the person with civil rights and obligations to know that their rights and interests were violated? Let's learn and evaluate the "mistake" factor through the following real-life situation:

Content of the situation:
Previously, Mr. A and Ms. B were husband and wife (divorced in 2021). Mrs. C is Ms. B's biological mother and Mr. A's mother-in-law. The real estate in province K is the common property of Mr. A and Ms. B, created during the marriage. From 2016 to 2020, the couple mortgaged their house and land to bank D to borrow money. By the beginning of 2020, they still owed the principal of 350,000,000 VND. Ms. B and Ms. C took advantage of Mr. A's illiteracy and deceived him into going to the Notary Office to sign a contract to transfer the entire land area of 119.3 m2 and the 2-storey house built on land in province K, which had been granted a land use rights certificate to Ms. C. In order to carry out the deception to appropriate Mr. A's house and land, Ms. C and Ms. B lied to him that Ms. C had a plot of land in district H, province K. She was afraid that her son (Ms. B's brother) would fight over it, so she wanted to transfer it to Mr. and Mrs. A. On January 3, 2020, Mrs. C and Ms. B hid from him and went to pay off the debt to bank D in the amount of 350,000,000 VND to withdraw the red book. After getting the red book, Ms. B and Ms. C told Mr. A to go to the Notary Office to sign the land transfer contract in district H, province K that Mrs. C had told him and Ms. B. Because Mr. A could not read or write and believed the words of Mrs. C and Ms. B that the land was transferred in district H, he signed the confirmation of the transfer contract at the Notary Office. After the contract was notarized, Mrs. C transferred the name and was granted a Certificate of Land Use Rights and mortgaged the entire house and land to bank F for a loan of 1.7 billion VND. Currently, Mr. A is still the person directly managing and using the house. Now, Mr. A requests the Court to resolve the "Request to declare the contract for transferring land use rights and assets attached to land invalid, to declare the mortgage contract between Ms. C and Bank F invalid and to resolve the consequences of the contract for transferring land use rights invalid, to receive back the value of 1/2 of the above real estate", "Request to cancel the certificate of registration of mortgage of land use rights and assets attached to land, to cancel the notarization of the contract for transferring land use rights and assets attached to land". Ms. B does not agree because she thinks that Mr. A is literate.

The question is whether Mr. A is literate or not: During the process of collecting evidence, there were many documents to verify that: "After synthesizing the verification of the units, the Provincial Department of Education and Training has not recorded the education of citizen A, born on October 8, 1973, at any general education institution in the province".
Thus, the process of living from birth until now, Mr. A has not attended any school in the area, consistent with Mr. A's statement on November 10, 2023, "from birth until now, he has not left another province to live, from childhood to adulthood, he has not been able to go to school, until he was 12 or 13 years old, he went to sell ka rem, poured aluminum and plastic, sold orange cakes and then got married". In addition, other collected documents show that Mr. A often "points" his right index finger without any self-declaration written by Mr. A. Because Mr. A was previously criminally punished for "Theft of property", in his personal record, it shows that Mr. A is illiterate.

Thus, through different sources of evidence, it is shown that the documents, administrative procedures at the local level, contracts, procedural documents with law enforcement agencies that Mr. A directly performed only "pointed" or wrote "A"... without personally performing any transaction, document, contract, study, administrative procedure at the local level. This is contradictory and illogical for a person who can read and write because when performing any transaction, procedural document, individuals, agencies, organizations require individuals to read and write the content of their transactions themselves.

From the above analysis, reinforced by many different sources of evidence, from many different time points up to now, there is enough basis to determine that before filing a lawsuit, Mr. A could only write the symbols "AN", "TRAN VAN A" or "pointed" in all documents, not after filing a lawsuit that Mr. A showed this. Therefore, there is a basis to affirm that Mr. A cannot write or read, only knows how to write capital letters according to his name and cannot understand the characters when making transactions.

Therefore, there is a basis to determine that the contract for transferring land use rights and assets attached to land notarized on January 3, 2020 between the transferor Mr. A and Ms. B and the transferee Ms. C is invalid in terms of content and is mistaken, deceptive, and violates Articles 47 and 48 of the Notary Law; Articles 117, 122, 126, 127, 129 of the Civil Code.
- Regarding the first viewpoint, it is stated that: In the above case, the contract for transferring land use rights is invalid due to mistake according to the provisions of Article 126 of the Civil Code.
- Regarding the second viewpoint, it is stated that: The contract for transferring land use rights is not invalid due to a mistake according to Article 126 of the Civil Code because Mr. A can write his name, this is A's subjective will, if Mr. A is illiterate, he must ask the notary to read it again, and ask for a witness.

As analyzed above, the first viewpoint is also the author's viewpoint. Currently, the Law does not specifically stipulate which cases are considered mistakes, the assessment of the mistake element depends on the nature of each specific civil case and is considered and assessed by each agency conducting the proceedings.

We look forward to receiving your comments.

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Practices

Team of Lawyer

RIGHT TO INVITE LAWYERS AND RIGHT TO VISIT THE DEFENDANT DURING DETENTION: LEGAL BASIS, ...

NOTARIZATION OF CONTRACTS AND TRANSACTIONS INVOLVING FOREIGN ELEMENTS ACCORDING TO ...

RESOLVING LABOR DISPUTES INCLUDES FOREIGN ELEMENTS UNDER CURRENT LAW

REGULATIONS ON PERMANENT AND TEMPORARY RESIDENCE UNDER CURRENT RESIDENCE LAW

SCOPE OF LAWSUIT AND RIGHT TO CHANGE AND SUPPLEMENT REQUESTS OF THE LICENSEE UNDER THE ...

RELEASE IN CRIMINAL CASES UNDER CURRENT LAW

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