Confirmation Of Liability Subject In Joint Debt Of Husband And Wife

Spouses joint debt is a debt with the nature of property law and identity law.During the marriage between the spouses,when either the husband or the wife has exterior liabilities and the creditor requires the spouses to assume the liability to pay the debt mutually,the identification of the debt liability subject exists extensive disputes.However,under the current circumstance that the existing legislation focuses on protecting the rights of the creditor,the trial and jurisdiction of the judges almost tend to identify the debtor’s debts due to individual drug taking,gambling,usury or illegal fund raising as spouses joint debt and expand the scope of the debt liability subject artificially,which greatly damage the interest of the debtor’s spouse.With the development of social economy,the vast changes of people’s values and lifestyle have pushed the legal identification of spouses joint debt into the test of justice.The author holds that the debt liability subject identification of one spouse with exterior liabilities shall obtain amendment on the level of legislation and judicature.Taking the legal basic specification review of spouses joint debt as the logic start point,this paper emphasizes to analyze the main reasons why the debt liability subject of one spouse with exterior liabilities is identified expansively,evaluates the main disputes on the rational identification of the debt liability subject,and takes the rational definition of spouses joint debt as the entry point to complete the identifying rules of debt subject on the level of procedural law and substantial law and realize the rational identification of debt liability subject.This paper is divided into four parts:The first part takes the legal basic specification review of spouses joint debt as the logic start point,conducts the classifying analysis and comment on the identification of spouses joint debt,and searches out the judicial basis to deal with the external legal relations of spouses joint debt from the existing legal basic specification,which is Article 24 of The Supreme Court’s Interpretation Concerning Several Issues of Applying The Marriage Law of The People’s Republic of China.The second part synthesizes the perspective of procedural law and substantial law to analyze that the main reasons why the debt liability subject of one spouse with exterior liabilities is identified expansively lie in: the exempting identification of spouses joint debt exists missing on the legislation,exists deflects on the distribution of proof burden,exists obstacles on the enforcement of the judge’s discretionary power and exists deviations on the transformation of proof burden.The third part evaluates the applicable disputes of law as well as identifying rule disputes of debt liability subject identification,and holds that the identification of spouses joint debt shall be discussed under the framework of the marriage law and the identifying rule of debt liability subject shall focus on increasing the situations of exempting identification.The fourth part utilizes the deduction rule of objectives and redefines spouses joint debt from two aspects such as spouses agreeing debt and joint benefit on the basis of confirming the right to housekeeping agency.Taking the concept of spouses joint debt as the start point,this paper increases the exempting identification situations of spouses joint debt and complete the identifying rules of the debt liability subject of one spouse with exterior liabilities from the perspective of substantial law,as well as clarifies the rational distribution and transformation of proof burden and completely exploits the advantages of the judge’s discretionary power to protect the interests of each parties equally from the perspective of procedural law.