Research On The Couple’s Joint Debts

Along with the ubiquity of debt incurred by either party or both parties of the couple, in daily juridical practice, the issue of couple’s joint debts has always been not only the major content of marital property relationship, but also a hot and difficult issue no matter in daily juridical practice or in academic or theoretical circle. Whether couple’s joint debts can be defined in a distinct manner or not is of great legal significance for the realization of effective protection upon legitimate interests of both marriage parties and the third party. This article is aimed at researching relevant issues of couple’s joint debts in China, while analyzing the defects of legislative and juridical practice and making some suggestions. This article is divided into4chapters except for the introduction and epilogue:Chapter Ⅰ elaborates the fundamental theory of couple’s joint debts and defines such aspects of couple’s joint debts as the concept, feature and nature, considering that couple’s joint debts refers to that debt incurred by husband and wife basing on statutory circumstances or mutual consensus and both marriage parties shall assume obligation establishing joint and several for the foregoing. The nature of couple’s joint debts belongs to joint debt.Chapter Ⅱ sorts out and interprets the prevailing regulations with respect to couple’s joint debts in China, and expounds the scope of couple’s joint debts, indicating that double standards including "purpose standard" and "duration standard" are adopted for the definition of couple’s joint debts, which means that distribution of evidential burden regarding marital debt issues can be diverse according to different regulations adopting different definition standards.Chapter Ⅲ mainly, on the basis of the above analysis, points out the fact that in virtue of ambiguous definition of the scope of couple’s joint debts stated by law and the adoption of conflicting double standards for definition in prevailing couple’s joint debts system, the definition citations for "couple’s joint debts" turn out to be inconsistent and the distribution of persuasion burden to be unfair in juridical practice. And in consequence, in most cases, the property right of the party who didn’t borrow money cannot get appropriate protection according to the judgment result.Chapter IV proposes that, in consideration with the above defects of couple’s joint debts system of China, it’s supposed to investigate whether the debt is incurred for the purpose of marital community interests, so as to confirm whether the debt incurred by one party during the marriage shall be defined as couple’s joint debts. In addition, this Chapter puts forward with execution suggestions concerning specific system establishment with a view to distinguishing couple’s joint debts from personal debt.