Normal and logical does not necessarily apply to Cambodia. Nothing makes sense...And so on, it goes on and on in the land of Wonder. Question after one department to the next will have you running around all day with no answers, does your face fit, have you greased the palms of the pecking order, or does no one in authority genuinely know because someone never past on that of new policies/procedures or recorded information. I have found in the past many will not commit, they seem to not want responsibility, more so not being Khmer, basically I get the impression (sometimes language barrier) but mostly they have not got the time of day for you.

Normally you find the top guy first and it goes simply.

Sorry your missus can't get a hard one for you NKOTB, I can only imagine how difficult and complicated it must be with the geographical divide.

It all started with the idea of missus holding onto hard title so everyone wouldn’t be kicked off the land if problems ensue. But like all good ideas, it just gets messier and messier.

Anyways, the family lands used to be big and all under hard title. Then taken by the bank and broken into soft title. Various parts were bought by others. A friend of the family took pity and bought the family a piece to live on. This was decades ago.

My thought was to have any family requests for money come through us, instead of various members continuously mortgaging the land to the bank. They pay back whenever they can. Some months, nothing. Miss too many payments, and the bank take it back.

But all good intentions have been for naught. Accusations of looking down on them, to various members already asking for loans, to fights with the village chief, to rumors that missus is secretly planning to kick all of them out and sell to a developer.

Then of course, the revelation that one side of a road can get hard title, while the other side cannot.

Helping Khmers is messy and sometimes not worth the effort.

in your previous post topic19089.html you said your wife already had hard title but it seems that this wasn't the case.

Soft title does not automatically infer the right to convert to hard title. if at the national level the land is designated as government land or falls within offsets for roads, rivers etc then you can never obtain hard title even though soft title was given.

If, as you said, hard title was possessed in the past it should still be possessed now and any sub division would have to be done and paid for (not cheap) at the national level. However given the story linked it looks unlikely that hard title was ever really held

newkidontheblock wrote:It all started with the idea of missus holding onto hard title so everyone wouldn’t be kicked off the land if problems ensue. But like all good ideas, it just gets messier and messier.

Anyways, the family lands used to be big and all under hard title. Then taken by the bank and broken into soft title. Various parts were bought by others. A friend of the family took pity and bought the family a piece to live on. This was decades ago.

My thought was to have any family requests for money come through us, instead of various members continuously mortgaging the land to the bank. They pay back whenever they can. Some months, nothing. Miss too many payments, and the bank take it back.

But all good intentions have been for naught. Accusations of looking down on them, to various members already asking for loans, to fights with the village chief, to rumors that missus is secretly planning to kick all of them out and sell to a developer.

Then of course, the revelation that one side of a road can get hard title, while the other side cannot.

Helping Khmers is messy and sometimes not worth the effort.

I don't understand. How exactly are you helping them?

Bitte_Kein_Lexus wrote:I don't understand. How exactly are you helping them?

I had the idiotic thought of trying to save them from themselves.

Father lost all the lands to the bank in the past. Subsequently the kids never got a good role model of how to be financially responsible. About half of them are very industrious and responsible. The other half are poster children for Explorer’s rants about Cambodians. They borrow money at the drop of hat. And don’t necessarily have thoughts about making payments.

Lots of Khmer have lost their land because they either missed payments or stopped bothering to pay altogether. I didn’t want that to happen.

If missus keeps the land there’s zero chance of others borrowing on it and thus losing the land.

Stupid idea. More trouble than it’s worth.

I think the family doesn't really know the real situation behind all this. Many Khmer have no idea of the machinations how things work. Explorer6 explained it clearly. If the bank repossessed it with a hard title in place that title remains valid. If they broke it down into smaller lots and 'sold'' those that was probably only a lease registered at the local level which your people mistakenly considered a soft title. A lot of ambiguity in that story.

Agree with several other posters that it seems unlikely that the original hard title could be broken into smaller plots without possession of the hard title.

You say this happened decades ago- are we talking pre-UNTAC? Pre Khmer Rouge?

It seems to figure this out you need to know the bank and determine what happened with the original title.

And re Sangkat chief: is your wife talking to them directly? Or is this what a family member is telling her? It could also be that someone in the family who’s against your plan has put the sangkat chief up to telling you this to stall your plan.