General Regime of Obligations: Natural Obligations, Oblique Action, and Paulian Action

Vocabulary flashcards covering natural obligations, the oblique action, and the Paulian action based on French law lecture material.

General Regime of Obligations (RGO)

The body of legal rules applicable to all obligations regardless of their source (contract, tort, quasi-contract, judicial decision, or statute) governing their execution, circulation, and extinction.

Natural Obligation

An unenforceable moral duty or degraded civil obligation that transforms into a binding civil obligation upon voluntary execution or a promise of execution by the debtor.

Classical Conception of Natural Obligations

A doctrine maintaining a strict boundary between moral and civil duties, restricting natural obligations to degenerated civil obligations (e.g., time-barred debts) or legally defective acts (e.g., contracts void for incapacity or form defect).

Modern Conception of Natural Obligations

A doctrine formulated by Georges Ripert defining a natural obligation as a moral duty (devoir de conscience) recognized by judges that elevates into a binding civil obligation upon voluntary execution or promise.

Oblique Action (Action Oblique)

A legal remedy governed by Article 1341 of the French Civil Code allowing a creditor to exercise the inactive debtor's patrimonial rights and actions for the debtor's account.

Debtor Inaction (Carence du débiteur)

The failure or neglect of a debtor to claim or exercise their own due patrimonial rights, serving as a required condition for a creditor to initiate an oblique action.

Rights Strictly Attached to the Person

Patrimonial or extra-patrimonial rights involving moral or personal considerations (e.g., divorce, personal injury compensation, revocation of life insurance beneficiaries) that are excluded from the scope of the oblique action.

Paulian Action (Action Paulienne)

A legal remedy under Article 1341-2 of the French Civil Code permitting a creditor to declare unenforceable against themselves acts performed by their debtor in fraud of their rights.

Inopposability (Unenforceability)

The legal sanction resulting from a successful Paulian action, making the debtor's fraudulent act ineffective as to the acting creditor while preserving its validity between the debtor and third parties.

Debtor Fraud in Paulian Action

An act accomplished by a debtor with the intent to harm creditors or with the conscious awareness that the act causes prejudice by organizing or increasing the debtor's insolvency.

Third-Party Complicity in Fraud

The requirement that a creditor bringing a Paulian action against an act for value (à titre onéreux) must prove the third party had knowledge of the debtor's fraud and resulting insolvency.

Principle of Priority of Claim (Antériorité de la créance)

The general rule requiring the creditor's claim to exist prior to the debtor's fraudulent act for a Paulian action to be admissible, subject to exceptions where fraud was pre-arranged before the debt's creation.

Payment of Un-matured Debt Exception

An exception in Paulian action law where paying a debt before its due date can be challenged as fraudulent, whereas paying a mature, due debt is generally immune as 'the price of the race'.