Part I Prescription
Negative Prescription
8 Extinction of other rights relating to property by prescriptive periods of twenty years.
(1)
If, after the date when any right to which this section applies has become exercisable or enforceable, the right has subsisted for a continuous period of twenty years unexercised or unenforced F1... then as from the expiration of that period the right shall be extinguished.
F2(1A)
Subsection (1B) applies if—
(a)
a relevant claim is made in relation to a right to which this section applies,
(b)
the claim is made before the time at which the prescriptive period mentioned in subsection (1) would, but for subsection (1B), expire, and
(c)
at that time—
(i)
the claim has not been finally disposed of, and
(ii)
the proceedings in which the claim is made have not otherwise come to an end.
(1B)
The prescriptive period is extended so that it expires—
(a)
when the claim is finally disposed of, or
(b)
when the proceedings in which the claim is made come to an end (where the proceedings come to an end without the claim having been finally disposed of).
(1C)
If the relevant claim (as finally disposed of) is successful, the right is to be treated for the purposes of subsection (1) as having been exercised or enforced by the creditor at the time when the claim was made.
(2)
This section applies to any right relating to property, whether heritable or moveable, not being a right specified in Schedule 3 to this Act as an imprescriptible right or falling within section 6 or 7 of this Act as being a right correlative to an obligation to which either of those sections applies.