Clients funds held by notaries : can such practice be improved?

Abstract

In practice of their profession, Notaries tend to hold clients’ bank account to be able to hold client’s funds assigned to their care. Notaries hold client’s funds, mainly in relation to registration fees, taxes, and deposit to purchase an immovable property. Normally, such funds are held by the notary for a few months until completion of the transaction, whereby the money are transferred to the vendor. However, clients are facing numerous difficulties when the notary misuse such funds. The focus of the professional report is to shed light on the current legal framework which Notaries follow to hold funds entrusted to their care by their clients for payments of a transaction. Finally, the analyses of Maltese law and Maltese judgements and different foreign law including Italian Law, French Law and Slovenian Law and their interpretation would provide numerous guidelines and solutions to the Maltese legislation and help amend the law which would thereby improve the protection of clients from defaulting notaries. Thus, a number of possible solutions are provided in the concluding chapter, such solutions would decrease and eliminate lacunae as much as possible.