Applying The System Of Lawsuit Prescription To Cases Where Spouses Owe Performance To Each Other

The property relations between spouses constitutes, at the legal level, a significant part of spouse relations, while debtor-creditor relationship in spouse relations constitutes a significant part of the property relations in that spouse relations. Alongside different designation of the obligee and the obligor, the debtor-creditor relationship in spouse relations can be divided into external and internal debtor-creditor relationship, and the latter is the mutual performance relationship referred in this paper. It is worth investigating theoretically and in judicial practice whether barriers exist for the obligee to exercise his or her rights in circumstances where spouses owe performance to each other(given the personhood feature imposed on every spouse relations). Such special personhood feature of spouse relations is also pertinent to the application of the lawsuit prescription system to cases where spouses owe performance to each other. It introduces a crucial issue about whether to apply the lawsuit prescription in the conventional manner or to apply it with certain adjustments. How to address this issue matters in that it determines the equity of rights and obligations between spouses and, in a deeper sense, the substantive equality of law.This paper is comprised of five parts. It begins with discussions about spouse relations, the mutual performance relationship and the defense of lawsuit prescription. Based upon an investigation into the content of, and values inbeded in, the mutual performance relationship and the lawsuit prescription system, this paper sets out the influence of spouse relations on the application of the lawsuit prescription to the mutual performance relationship. Accordingly, it draws a conclusion that a special lawsuit prescription system shall be applied. Then, the final discussion is given to the special rules of the proposed system.The first section elicits the research question. By describing and analyzing a case study, this section exhibits the judicial means and attitudes towards addressing the subject of this paper. Particularly, through a comparison between reasons given by the first and the second ruling, the research question is well established, ie, whether there may exist mutual performance relationship between spouses, and whether a particular lawsuit prescription should be applied provided the mutual performance relationship exists.The second section discusses the mutual performance relationship, mainly focusing on whether such relationship exists. With the positive conclusion from the first part, the discussion switches to linkages and conflicts between spouse relations and the lawsuit prescription(in particular, barriers to complete lawsuits). According to comparative legal studies, spouse relations is often selected to be the barriers of lawsuit completion for legislative choices across jurisdictions. Furthermore, value conflicts between the two are identified by comparing their institutional spirits.The fourth section further proves that spouse relations should be a barrier for the lawsuit prescription completion, provided that the mutual performance relationship is possible and the spouse relations disserve the exercise of one party’s rights. Finally, the fifth section designs special institutions for the lawsuit prescription applied to the mutual performance relationship.