Research On The Affirmation Of Spouses Joint Debt

With the development of social economy,there are more and more disputes of spouses joint debt.According to Marriage Law and Judicial Interpretation of China,spouses should repay joint debt together.When creditors are unable to realize their creditor's rights,in order to expand the scope of protection,the spouses of the borrowers are often required to jointly repay the debts,which leads to the increasingly prominent problem of the identification of spouses joint debt in China.For example,the imbalance between protection of creditor's rights and marital-family;the inconformity on identification of joint debt;the inconsistent judgement on cognate cases;and difficulty in identifying spouses joint debt under some special situation as debt in separation period,fictitious debt in malicious collusion.In January 2018,the Supreme People's Court issued the"Interpretation about the Relevant Issues on the Application of Laws in the Trial of Spouses Joint Debt Cases ",which is an amendment to Article 24 of the "Judicial Interpretation of Marriage Law(?)" This interpretation established that spouses joint debt must be signed together,distinguished if amount of debt is overstepping the normal requirement of marital-family.Besides,when amount of debt is overstepping the normal requirement of marital-family,the burden of proof is assigned to creditor to prove the personal debt by promising is used for living,production,management of spouses or promised by spouses,thereby diminishing the burden of proof when one of spouses are not debtors.This is an improvement in the legislation for the identification of spouses joint debt in China.But there are still some shortcomings on the identification of spouses joint debt,such as the confusion of the identification rules,the unfair distribution on the burden of proof,and the lack of supporting systems to ensure the implementation of the law.Therefore,the author believes that we should focus on dilemma of judicial practice and the legislative defects on the identification of spouses joint debt,and draw some lessons from foreign legislative experience in the identification of spouses joint debt such as French,German,American,to normalize legislation of spouses joint debt,to perfect the distribution of burden of proof,to give effective discretion and interpretation rights to judges,to establish agency of family affair,the institution of "oint debt joint signature",promising property publicity and other supporting institutions.Finally,to perfect the identification of spouses joint debt in China.