Legal Transactions: An Overview of Concepts and Principles
Legal Transactions
Legal suits are events that arise from, modify, or dissolve existing legal relationships. These events are governed by the rule of law.
Juridical Facts
- Track suit natural: Arises from a natural phenomenon.
- Track suit human: Depends on human will, encompassing both lawful and unlawful acts.
Human acts can be:
- Voluntary: The agent intends the legal effect.
- Involuntary: Legal consequences occur beyond the agent’s control.
Acquisition of Rights
- Acquisition under universal title: The purchaser inherits all or a portion of the predecessor’s rights and obligations. Example: Heir.
- Acquisition for particular title: The purchaser acquires specific rights, not all obligations. Example: Caliph inheriting a specific item.
Rights can be:
- Present: Immediately exercisable upon acquisition.
- Future: Exercisable upon the completion of a condition or term.
A right exists if there is an interest, even if incomplete, protected by a legal norm.
Conditional Rights
A conditional right depends on a future and uncertain event. The holder acquires the right only if the condition is met.
Winding Up of Rights
Rights can be extinguished by:
- Alienation: Transferring the object of the right to another, resulting in the loss of entitlement for the former owner.
- Resignation: The holder relinquishes the right without transferring it to anyone, renouncing the rights pertaining to their private interest, unless legally prohibited.
- Death of the holder: Personal rights are not transferable.
Legal Business
Legal business is the self-regulation of interests through the declaration of a rule, regardless of the will of the procedure. It is a definite rule established by the parties. Legal business falls within the scope of autonomy, allowing individuals to self-regulate their interests within legal limits.
Procedures
- Solemn: Requires specific formal requirements prescribed by law (e.g., wills, deeds of sale of immovable property).
- Not solemn: No legal requirements for its effectiveness (e.g., purchase and sale of movable property).
Effects
- Establishing: Efficacy operates prospectively (not retroactively), from the time of completion.
- Declaring: Efficacy is retroactive, effective from the time the fact occurred, related to the declaration of intention.
Elements of Legal Transactions
Legal transactions require a declaration of will. The agent’s ability to participate in the valid legal transaction is essential. A special ability or legitimacy is distinct from the general ability of parties to the validity of legal business. For a transaction to be perfect, it is not enough that the agent is fully capable; it is indispensable that they are a legitimate party, meaning they have the competence to practice it, given their position in relation to certain legal interests. Their lack of competence can make the deal void or voidable. Legitimation depends on the particular relationship of the subject and object of the act of negotiation.
Consequences of an act performed by an incompetent person: No assistance is voidable (Art. 171 CC).
Vices of Consent
Vices of consent, such as error, fraud, and coercion, are grounded in a lack of volitional action regarding the statement. These vices adhere to and penetrate the statement, appearing in the form of reason, force, and determination, establishing differences between the true intention or preventing its formation.
Error
Error is an inaccurate or untrue concept about anything, person, or object that influences the formation of the will. To vitiate the transaction, the error must be substantial, real, and excusable, meaning it is based on a plausible reason or is of such magnitude that any intelligent person exercising ordinary care could commit it.
Fraud
Bonus does not induce dolu nullity. Lawful and tolerated behavior, such as consistent reticence, exaggerating good qualities, or dissembling defects, is not intended to harm.
Dolu malus is the use of clever tricks to harm someone. This intent is dealt with in the Civil Code, erecting it in default of the legal, qualified to bring about its nullity.
Third-Party Intent
To cause the annulment of the transaction, knowledge of a contracting party is required. However, according to Art. 148 of the Civil Code, the legal business can also be canceled by the intent of a third party if the party enjoying it had or should have known. Otherwise, although the legal business remains, the third party is liable for all damages to the party they deceived.
Coercion
Coercion: Simple awe, fear of displeasing one’s father, mother, or persons to whom obedience and respect are owed, is incapable of undermining the deal.
Social Vices
Social vices, like vices of consent, do not affect the validity of the transaction.
Simulation
Simulation is a misleading statement of the will to produce effects different from those ostensibly indicated. It is characterized by intentional disagreement between the internal will and the declared will. It sets up, apparently, a legal business, which, in fact, does not exist or is hidden under a certain appearance, the business really wanted.
Special Forms of Legal Transactions
- Shape free or general: Any means of manifestation of the will of the transaction is acceptable, as the law does not require a specific form.
- Shape special or solemn: The law provides specific ceremonies for the validity of certain legal transactions.
- Shape contract: The parties elect the form, as Art. 109 CC provides that parties to a contract may determine by a clause the public instrument for the validity of the business, provided there is no legal requirement as to that contract.
Accidental Elements
Accidental elements are clauses that modify one or more of the natural consequences of a legal transaction. They are accidental because the act can be negotiated without them. They are incidental statements of intention incorporated into another, which is grand.
Conditions
A condition is a clause that makes the effect of the transaction dependent on a future and uncertain event. It requires a fact always in the future on which the effect of the business will depend. It relates to an uncertain event that may or may not occur.
Terms
A term is the day that begins or extinguishes the effectiveness of legal business. It is a clause that, by the will of the parties, makes the effects of the act negotiated dependent on a future event that is certain.
Modes or Charges
A mode or charge is a clause that is incidental, as a rule, to acts of donation inter vivos (donation) or mortis causa (testament, legacy), although it may appear in promises of reward or other unilateral declarations of will that impose a burden or an obligation on the person or legal entity contemplated by these acts. It may consist of an allowance in favor of the person who establishes it, or even a third party without benefit of particular interest to certain people. Example: Donation of land for which a school is built; legacy with the assignment of building a tomb for the testator.
Invalidity
Invalidity is the penalty imposed by the legal rule that determines the deprivation of the legal effects of the business done in disobedience to what the law prescribes.
Causes of Nullity
Nullity is a penalty that, before the severity of the attack on the legal system, is the deprivation of the effectiveness of the law had the business, if it were under the law, an act that results in a nullity as if it never existed since its formation, because the declaration of its nullity takes effect ex tunc; acts are void main negotiating tainted by bias, obviously can not have any legal effect, for example, when you are missing any essential element, that is, if practiced absolutely incapable person, if you object unlawful or impossible, if not take the form prescribed by law, when committed in violation of law and morality, even though the essential elements, and when the law categorically declare it null or denying effect.