Research On The Debt Liability Of One Spouse For Tort Under The Perspective Of The Civil Cod

For a long time,the issue of joint debt of husband and wife has been widely discussed by the academic and judicial area in China,and the related issues are mainly discussed with the contractual debt as the core of the development,while the debt of one of the spouses in tort is not directly mentioned in the legislation.During the marriage,the causes and consequences of one spouse’s tort behavior are becoming more and more diversified,and the dispute cases of how to identify the debts incurred by one spouse due to tort behavior have further increased and become more and more complicated,such as the tort debt arising from one spouse’s operation of online vehicles,,the tort debt arising from one spouse’s abstraction of capital contribution to a company as a shareholder,the tort debt arising from one spouse’s As a listed company executives failed to do their duty and was found to be a misrepresentation of the infringement of the debt,the aforementioned infringement of the debt belongs to the infringing party’s personal debt or the joint debt of the husband and wife,and what criteria to define? How to basically balance the interests of the tortfeasor,the tortfeasor’s spouse and the infringed party,i.e.,how to undertake the debts arising from tort acts of one spouse has become a problem demanding solution.Article 1064 of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China(hereinafter referred to as ‘the Civil Code’)regulates the content of joint debts of husband and wife.Having absorbed the Interpretation on issues matrimonial about debt-related arguments issued by the Supreme People’s Court in 2018,the Civil Code provides direct application to debts incurred in the areas of commonality,such as ‘joint debts and joint signing of debts’ and ‘daily living needs’ according to its literal meaning.However,there are ambiguous areas in Article 1064 of the Civil Code regarding the statutory meaning of community debts as it fails to treat this issue from the perspective of the whole system of creditors’ rights.This article fails to clarify whether the rules on community debts are applicable and the settlement of tort debt disputes arising from the tort conducted by one of the spouses.The absence of relevant laws and regulations and judicial interpretations directly leads to the inability to determine the nature of the tort debt of one of the spouses and the criteria for defining the joint debt of the spouses,so that judges can only rely on free evidence to adjudicate disputes,and thus cannot form a relatively uniform adjudication path in judicial practice regarding the debt of one of the spouses in tort.In addition,Article1089 of the Civil Code,which stipulates that the joint debt of the spouses shall be paid jointly or by agreement upon divorce,is not sufficient to protect the rights and interests of the non-infringing spouse,and the liability property of the non-infringing spouse should be further limited.The dispute over the liability of a spouse’s tort debt discussed in this article requires a balance between the protection of the interests of the injured party and the protection of the rights and interests of the non-infringing spouse,because neither the injured party nor the non-infringing spouse is essentially at fault.In this paper,165 judicial cases of disputes related to the tort debt of one spouse decided by courts nationwide between January 1,2021 and December 31,2022 after the Civil Code came into force are taken as samples for study,and the rules for the assumption of the tort debt of one spouse are logically proven to clarify the nature of the tort debt of one spouse,the rules for the assumption of the tort debt of one spouse and explore the multiple paths of dispute resolution in disputes over the assumption of debt by one of the spouses in tort.This paper is divided into the six parts: the first part is the introduction,which mainly analyzes the current problems and the significance of the study of the tort debt of one of the husband and wife.Chapter 1 of the main body mainly presents the cases of disputes relating to the assumption of the debt for debts incurred by one party of a couple arising from tort in judicial practice,using individual cases as the topic.Samples from 165 judicial cases are cited to summarize the different types of debts incurred by one party of a couple arising from tort in judicial practice into five categories,namely,traffic accident type,employer’s liability or production and operation type,shareholder’s liability type,due diligence type,and other type,and to identify the problems in current judicial practice.Chapter 2 sorts out the theory on the assumption of the debt for debts incurred by one party of a couple arising from tort raised in Chapter 1;Chapter 3 introduces and analyzes the relevant legislation and practice of countries and regions outside China;Chapter 4 summarizes the legislation and judicial experience in China regarding the issues raised in Chapter 1,learns from and absorbs judicial experience outside China,improves the interpretation of Article1064 of the Civil Code and Article 1089 of the Civil Code in light of the actual situation in China,and clarifies the definition criteria for the debt assumed by one party of a couple arising from tort,the allocation of burden of proof,the limitation on property of liability and other rules,in order to improve the judicial relief ways,and achieve self-consistency in theory and meet the needs of judicial practice.The conclusion part makes the summary and outlook of this paper.