Study On The Third Party Beneficiary Contract

The doctrine of privity of contract shows that contract relation only restrains contract parties, anybody, who is not a contract party, neither enjoys contract rights, nor bears contract obligations. The privity of contract is important principle in the classical contractual law system, which has been abidance generally in the continental law system and in the Anglo-American law system. But the contract relativity appeared more and more involved third party effect, along with the development of social economy and diversification of behavior of market deal day by day and, enhancement in the continuity and relevance of business process incessantly. The doctrine of privity of contract is abided, which is not suitable to multi-demand of the complecated social economical life. Third party beneficiary contract endows the third person with the right of contract, which is exception of the doctrine of privity of contract. The acknowledgement to third party beneficiary contract not only derives from respects to the party and developments on spirits of autonomy of private law, but also the objective demand of social development.Nowadays, third party beneficiary contract is already confirmed by local legislations and prejudications in numerous countries and regions, It is applied to the social economical intercourse widely and manifests the paticular function of the value, the third person enjoys the direct request right, which could shorten the process of payment and save the transaction cost and be convenient to the party; It is helpful to realize specific purpose of the party (for example, to assist to third person, to supplement insufficiency of main body qualifications of third person); It protects the benefit of trust of the party; It becomes the important tool, which realizes function of the social appropriateness of contract and so on.Our country does not approve the third party beneficiary contract in general significance in legislation. Although it is acknowledged to the specific type of third party beneficiary contract in some specific law, we lack a unified general rule to explain the frame, which cause that third party beneficiary contract is short of the foundation of request right in the contract law in reality. With the development of the circulation of commodites and the market economy increasingly, third party beneficiary contract shoud be deemed to the special type of contract and acknowledged in our contract law. In this article, the legal relationship, the legal origin, the function and lgal validity of third party beneficiary contract are analyzed and considered by means of the comparative study and the historical study. We attempt to find elicitation and estimate the contract's attitude of our country toword the third party beneficiary contract, and then make individual legislation proposal on our national foundation of present legislation comparing with that of other nations and regions.