The Positioning Of The Life Annuity Contract

Life annuity contract is a typical type of contract for many civil law countries and regions.The discussion on the relevant contents of this contract type not only stems from the deficiency of legislation and theoretical research,but also lies in the fact that in order to conform to the new trend of social and economic development,we must re-evaluate those contract types that take social and economic utility as an important reason for legislation.If its overall interest pattern has deviated from the situation that legislators originally envisaged,evaluated and stereotyped,then it is necessary to discuss its significance in the existing contract law system.The life annuity contract is the representative of this type of contract.This inquiry process not only involves the life annuity contract itself,but also provides us with important ideas to update or reconstruct the typical contract system by means of the opportunity of civil code compilation.This article consists of three parts: introduction,main body and conclusion.The introduction mainly discusses the reasons for discussing the type of contract again from two aspects: the life annuity contract itself and the compilation of the civil code in Chinese mainland.The conclusion part is a summary of the full text.The main body mainly consists of the following four parts:The first part makes it clear that the supplementary social security function played by the contract type in the field of pension is the important reason for its entry into the law through the textual research on the source and legislative reasons of the life-long fixed-term pension contract.However,this does not mean that the practical value of this type of contract is limited to this.The functional orientation under the policy objective cannot limit the scope of application of the contract.The concept of "annuity" contained in the life annuity contract shows that the contract type is animportant form of wealth annuity utilization and can be widely applied to other transaction situations.The second part aims to explain that the legislator’s initial functional orientation of the contract type directly affects the design of the basic standard system by re-combing some rules in the comparative law of life-long term contract.In order to make the contract type return to the original and adapt to the needs of social and economic development,Relevant rules must be appropriately adjusted.For example,the prepayment difference return rule and the debtor’s guarantee rule must be interpreted as arbitrary provisions.They will no longer completely deny the parties’ right to terminate the contract.They will only impose appropriate restrictions on the reasons and procedures for exercising the right to terminate the contract,allowing creditor’s rights and debts to be transferred when there is no personal status or special trust relationship involved.The third part is mainly to answer whether the above-mentioned repositioning of the practical function of the life annuity contract and the adjustment of the rules will affect the positioning of the contract type in the contract law system.The former is related to the social and economic significance of typical contracts,while the latter is related to the particularity of typical contracts in terms of rules,which is different from other types of contracts.With the help of typological thinking,life annuity contracts do not belong to the same type level in the existing typical contract system as contracts such as sales and leasing,which take payment types as classification criteria.It can be used to govern those contracts that also have the characteristics of "fixed-term payment for life".Since the life annuity contract does not restrict the types of payment,this hierarchical division will not cause conflicts in application and belongs to the combination of simple functions of the contract type.In addition,considering the practical importance of the contract type and the operability of legal technology,it is inappropriate to place the relevant rules of the life annuity contract in the general provisions of debt law or the general provisions of contract law.The fourth part,from the factual level,through comparative analysis,concretely shows the above repositioning of the life annuity contract in the contract law system,which is helpful to sort out the relationship between the contract type and other similar contracts and related systems.