The first question in any Vietnamese land dispute is not “who is right” but “which door”: court or the administrative authorities — choosing the wrong door costs one to two years back at the starting point. The Land Law 31/2024/QH15 has redrawn this jurisdiction map quite clearly around a single axis: the land-use-right documentation file. This article guides correct routing from the start, the role of commune-level mediation, and the evidence strategy that decides the case before the petition is filed.
Legal basis
Under Article 235 of the Land Law 31/2024/QH15, a land dispute where the parties hold no land-use-right certificate and none of the statutory land documents must first be mediated at the commune-level People’s Committee where the land lies; the mediation outcome — successful or not — is the condition for moving on. Under Article 236, post-mediation jurisdiction splits by documents: a dispute where at least one party holds a certificate or valid land document, and disputes involving assets attached to the land, belong to the courts; a dispute where no party holds documents and no attached assets exist belongs to the People’s Committees at the competent level.
A land dispute must be cleanly separated from an administrative complaint about land: a complaint under the Law on Complaints 02/2011/QH13 targets a specific administrative decision or act — a recovery decision, a certificate issuance, a land penalty decision — and follows the first-instance, second-instance complaint sequence or an administrative lawsuit. Many files fail because the party sues over “land-use rights” while their true target is an administrative decision, or vice versa. Correctly naming the case type is the first legal step, before any content strategy.
Applied analysis
In practice, the commune mediation minutes are the most undervalued and most important document: they fix both parties’ initial statements, the current land-use status and the grassroots authority’s view — all very hard to change later in court. An FDI company caught in a project-land dispute — land subleased from a local partner, encroaching households, a boundary with the neighbouring plot — should send legally competent people to the commune mediation from the first session, carrying the project’s full land file, instead of treating it as a formality to pass through.
Evidence strategy in Vietnamese land disputes turns on the historical paper chain: land allocation and lease decisions, the land lease contract, land-use levy and tax receipts, cadastral maps across periods, and witness statements on the use history. The party that builds a continuous land-use timeline with documents supporting each milestone usually wins, even where their certificate has defects. For FDI project land, the evidence also includes the investment file and the land handover minutes — the documents companies lose most often when project staff rotate.
Recommended actions
The right action order: identify the case type (dispute or complaint), inventory the documents to know which Article 236 jurisdiction branch you fall in, attend commune mediation with a complete file, then file at the right door with the mediation minutes attached. In parallel, request cadastral file extracts and historical maps as early as possible, because this State-held evidence is the foundation of every argument. On limitation, inheritance-of-land-use-rights disputes and related civil claims carry their own periods under the Civil Code 91/2015/QH13; administrative complaints and lawsuits have much shorter deadlines from receipt of the decision — missing an administrative deadline closes the door permanently, so deadline computation must happen the day a document arrives.
This article is delineated from the land recovery and compensation topic in the published EXP-6412 — a State recovery relationship under planning; this piece concerns rights conflicts between land users — and from the land inheritance dispute article in EXP-2376 in this same WAVE-ASSIGN wave, where family factors and inheritance limitation dominate.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a land dispute and a land complaint?
The dividing criteria are documents and attached assets. Under Article 236 of the Land Law 31/2024/QH15: if at least one party holds a land-use-right certificate or one of the statutory land documents, or the dispute involves assets attached to the land, the case belongs to the people’s court after commune-level mediation. If no party holds documents and no assets are attached to the land, jurisdiction belongs to the competent People’s Committee under the decentralisation rules. Before either door, mediation at the commune People’s Committee where the land lies is a mandatory step for disputes in the Article 235 categories, and the mediation minutes are the passport to the next step.
Which has jurisdiction: the court or the People’s Committee?
Mediation at the commune-level People’s Committee is a mandatory procedure before suing or requesting resolution for land disputes in the categories set by Article 235 of the 2024 Land Law — typically disputes where the parties hold no certificate or land documents. Without mediation minutes, the court or competent authority returns the file. For disputes where the party holds a full certificate, litigation practice still requires or recommends grassroots mediation depending on case type, so a company should treat the commune session as a serious procedural stage in every case: statements made there enter the minutes and follow the case to the end.
What is the statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit?
The difference lies in the target. A land dispute is a conflict between subjects over who holds the land-use right, where the boundary runs, who is encroaching — resolved under Articles 235 and 236 of the 2024 Land Law. An administrative complaint asserts that a State decision or act — a land recovery decision, a certificate issuance, a land-violation penalty — is unlawful and infringes the complainant’s rights; it follows the Law on Complaints 02/2011/QH13 through first and second complaint instances, or converts into an administrative lawsuit in court. One matter can hold both layers: a rights dispute with the neighbouring household and a complaint against the decision granting that household its certificate — then the two tracks must be run in parallel at their correct doors.
What is the evidence strategy (documents, on-site verification)?
An FDI company should: one, preserve the project’s complete land file — lease decision, lease contract, payment receipts and handover minutes — digitised and centrally stored; two, request cadastral extracts and the plot’s change history as soon as a dispute looms; three, send counsel or legal staff to the commune mediation and check every line of the minutes before signing; four, photograph, survey and notarise the land-use status at key moments; five, compute and calendar administrative deadlines the day any land-related decision arrives. This chain decides whether the company enters litigation holding the evidence initiative or chasing the other side’s evidence.
This article has been quality-reviewed by the FLAW AI Legal Council
