Understanding Heritage, Obligations, and Liabilities

Heritage: A set of rights and obligations of a person significant in monetary terms.

Duties: A legal relationship between certain persons, under which one is obligated to give, do, or not do certain things for the other. This legal connection places people in a position where they are required to give, do, or refrain from doing specific actions.

Sources of Obligations

  • Contract: An act by which a person obligates themselves to another to give, do, or not do something. It is an expression of intent that generates a utility.
  • Quasi-contracts
  • Crime
  • Unintentional Tort
  • Law

Classification of Obligations

  • Positive vs. Negative Obligations
  • Obligations to Do vs. Obligations Not to Do
  • Obligations of a Specific Body vs. True Obligations
  • Multiple Subject or Single Object Obligations
  • Natural and Civil Obligations
  • Principal or Accessory Obligations
  • Outright Obligations

Natural Effects

  • Novation
  • Additional Expenses
  • Case where obligation is discharged
  • Requirement of Payment:
    • Voluntary
    • Who has the goods
    • Other legal requirements
  • Void actions made by incompetent individuals, missing solemnity

Obligations Subject to Conditions

  • No presumption exists
  • Condition: An uncertain future event
  • Types:
    • Positive vs. Negative
    • Determinate vs. Indeterminate
    • Possibly Impossible
    • “Discretionary Powers”
    • Causal-Mixed-Resolutive Precedent
    • Resolutory Condition:
      • Ordinary Resolutory Condition
      • Commissory Pact: A specifically stipulated resolutory condition; typical; qualified (states that if the agreement is not met, it is resolved ipso jure), simple (states that it will be resolved if the contract is not met).
  • Term: A certain future event upon which the enforceability or extinction of a right depends.
    • Express vs. Tacit
    • Fatal vs. Non-Fatal
    • Determinate vs. Indeterminate
    • Voluntary-Legal-Judicial
    • Suspensive-Extinctive

Obligations Involving a Specific Body

Obligations with a Plurality of Objects

  • Simple Joint vs. Supportive (plurality of subjects with a divisible object, with extinction of the obligation to pay a debt):
    • Active vs. Passive (remission, novation, compensation, confusion, loss of the thing)
    • Indivisible physical intellectual absolute (by nature), obligation, payment

Obligation of a Specific Body

One in which we can determine specific individuals of a class or gender.

Obligations of Genre

Those in which an individual must be determined within a class.

Simple Duty Multiple Objectives

An obligation in which there should be several things.

Optional Liability

Those in which one thing is owed, but the debtor has the option of paying with that thing or another.

Alternative Obligation

Those in which several things are owed, but the execution of one exempts the execution of another.

Duty Pure and Simple

Those that possess and produce the normal effects of any obligation.

Obligation Subject to Conditions

Those that have a particular way of altering normal and ordinary effects.

Natural Obligations

A legal link between specific parties that places the debtor in the position of needing to effect the performance that constitutes its purpose, but the creditor has no legal recourse.

Ordinary Resolutory Clause

Any uncertain future event, other than the breach of an obligation, that depends on the extinction of a right.

Bonds of Solidarity

Those in which there are several debtors and creditors and are intended as a contribution that, despite being divisible, may be required by each creditor.

Bonds Simply Set

Those in which there are several debtors or creditors because of a single subject, so that each debtor is required to fulfill their part or share.