A creditor's right to revoke is originated from actio pauliana on Roman law. Both the creditor's right to revoke on civil law and the right to negate on the Debtor Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy Act came from the right to bring an action based on actio...
A creditor's right to revoke is originated from actio pauliana on Roman law. Both the creditor's right to revoke on civil law and the right to negate on the Debtor Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy Act came from the right to bring an action based on actio pauliana. The creditor whose right has been infringed by the debtor's fraudulent act may protect her right using the right to revoke and the right to negate. However, the creditor's right to revoke is a claim on substantive law, and a claim is a relative right. Thus, the creditor's right to revoke has its own limitation that can not preempt a real right.
The modern law is maintained by several principles. Such principles include first, a real right's superiority to a claim, second, establishment of legal system for real right for security, third, the principle of equal right among the creditors, fourth, the compulsory execution including provisional seizure and disposition, fifth, establishment of public notice system for real right changes, sixth, adaption of the system that hears only the evidence the parties submit to the court in the litigation process, seventh, clarification of compulsory execution system, eighth, guarantee for free right to dispose one's property.
A claim is basically a relative right and a right against a person. In other words, as the right of the creditor exists based upon the debtor's credit, the creditor may lose money if the debtor neglects to perform, and such risk always remains. Therefore, in order to prevent such damages, the law maintains real liability such as a real right for security system and compulsory execution system as well as personal liability. Those creditors who have not secured liability property as above are inevitably exposed to the risk associated with the realization of such claim, and she may have to suffer damages caused by such risk.
However, the creditor's right to revoke is an exception to the principles and it strongly protects the creditors.
The creditor may satisfy her claim by recovering the property from the beneficiary or the prior holder of the property who have obtained such property from the debtor cancelling the legal act of the debtor based on fraudulent conveyance if the creditor can not recover from the debtor due to the lack of debtor's property. Because of that, the beneficiary or the prior holder of the property may suffer unexpected damages. If that is true, there needs a theoretical justification for allowing such extraordinary remedies on the creditor's right to revoke.
Although some legal theories for the creditor's right to revoke, including the unjust enrichment theory, the torts theory, the non-performance of duty theory, have been asserted so far, it has been proved that each theory has its own logical limitations, and currently legal liability theory or legal claim theory is prevalent.
If the creditor's right to revoke is a legal claim, the theory of the justification for the creditor's right to revoke can not be offered, it is natural that the exercise of creditor's right to revoke must be limited as much as possible. The creditor is an existing interested party in relation to the debtor, and the beneficiary or the prior holder of the property is a newly interested party. Therefore, the right of both has legal value to be protected. The creditor''s right to revoke is based on the philosophy to protect the former in sacrifice of the latter.
In my opinion when there is a conflict as to who is worthier to be protected the latter should be protected more. This is because the former has the responsibility for not using the opportunity to protect her right by creating a real right for security or taking a procedure for a preservative measure before the debtor's fraudulent act whereas the latter acquired the ownership or a real right for security by paying consideration through a legal act with the debtor in reliance on the public notice. In other words, there should be a guarantee that a holder of real right has a priority to a holder of claim.
However, I am concerned because the Supreme court case is showing the trend that the scope of the creditor's right to revoke is becomimg wide. This is because it may cause distrust in our legal system as it brings an unexpected loss to the beneficiary or the prior holder of the property who must return the property in question.
With regard to the validity of the creditor's right to revoke, the theory of absolute void, the theory of relative void and the theory of liability have been argued. According to the theory of absolute void, any fraudulent act among the creditor, the debtor, the beneficiary, or the prior holder of property is void and the creditor is satisfied from the debtor's liability property which has been returned to the previous state from the beneficiary or the prior holder of property.
Although the theory of absolute void is supported by the previous theory of the right of formation, the new theory of the right of formation or the theory of the right of formation and claim that I propose, it is still a minority opinion.
According to the theory of relative void, only the fraudulent act between the creditor and the beneficiary or the prior holder of the property is void by the subjective preemptive power of the sentence of the lawsuit of the creditor's revoke right but the fraudulent act is still effective between the debtor and the beneficiary or the prior holder of the property. It means that the creditor may only claim the return of the subject of the fraudulent act by arguing against the beneficiary or the prior holder of the property that such act is void. It is the position of the majority opinion and the case law. The theory of relative void is supported by the theory of claim.
According to the theory of responsibility, the fraudulent act is still valid between the interested parties, a compulsory execution against the property retained by the beneficiary or the prior holder of the property is possible by recovering only the legal liability elements which exist in the property disposed by the debtor. It views the creditor's right to revoke as an acceptance lawsuit of compulsory execution but there is no such lawsuit under the current law and the theory of responsibility is not applicable in reality.
The theory of relative void has a limitation because it does not explain why the beneficiary or the prior holder of property, a participant in the fraudulent act, has to return the property, and why they have to take the property loss because of that. Therefore, in my personal opinion, it is appropriate that the legal nature of the creditor's right to revoke is the theory of the absolute void by insisting from the view of the previous theory of the right of formation or the theory of the right of formation and claim.
I believe that when "the right of formation and claim on substantive law" is established by further study, the basis for the theory of the absolute void will be clarified.
According to the theory of the right of formation and claim I argue, the fraudulent act becomes void between the debtor and the beneficiary or the prior holder of property by the formation power generated by the exercise of the creditor's right to revoke, as a result the creditor obtains new claim power(claim authority). Therefore the creditor can obtain new claim authority to demand the pull back to the debtor and the beneficiary or the prior holder of property directly.
If one views the creditor's right to revoke as “the combination of formation lawsuit and performance lawsuit on procedural law”, it is necessary to establish that the creditor's right to revoke is a new concept as “a legal right of formation and claim on substantive law”. I intend to prove it with further study in the future.
The elements required for the creditor's right to revoke have been reviewed. First of all, regarding fraudulent intent, considering the point that the gravity of the theory of intention is increasing in accordance with the worldwide legislation trend, I think that the theory of intention is more proper than the theory of recognition that the majority view and the case law take to the beneficiary or the prior holder, even if the theory of recognition is proper to the debtor.
It has been pointed out that with regard to the existence of the credit that should be protected the theory of the basic legal relation e subject property of preservative measures, adding the predictive fraudulent act to the formation and basic legal relation theory of the majority view is desired.
And it is argued that the case law is invalid because it excludes the exercise of the creditor's right to revoke the claim for a particular property. And in judging fraudulent behavior if there is consideration with financial value as there is no decrease in the debtor's property, it is argued with the legislation cases in foreign countries such as the U.S. that denying the formation of the fraudulent act is valid. Particularly, regarding division negotiation for inherited property and renunciation of such property, as long as there is no special provision as in France, it must be viewed as an exercise of exclusive right of one's self, and thus it is argued that exclusion of such act as subject of the creditor's right to revoke is valid, and in the case of property division in divorce, the case law which allows property division to certain limit even in the situation where the debt exceeds the credit is inequitable compared to other cases and therefore it must change.
In relation to the exercise of the creditor's right to revoke, it is argued that it is proper to treat such action as necessary joint action against all of the debtor, the beneficiary or the prior holder as defendants because the decision needs to be uniform and affirmed, and it is necessary to introduce the third party counterclaim in Germany or the cross-claim in the U.S. so that the claim for recovery or the claim for return of unjust enrichment between the debtor and the beneficiary or the prior holder.
It is shown that in a lawsuit procedure, the admission of the defense right based on the statute of limitation against the creditor of the debtor of the beneficiary or the prior holder is valid, and it is shown the basis of which the effect of the creditor's right to revoke must be void.
The creditor's right to revoke must be settled as an exception when the debtor's fraudulent intent and the beneficiary's or the prior holder's fraudulent intent are combined to harm the creditor because it needs to be harmonized with the modern legal system which guarantees the real right's priority to claim, and the application of the creditor's right to revoke must be limited in the case of the debtor's non fraudulent disposition act, and in the case of acquisition of property in exchange for consideration by the beneficiary or the prior holder. This is because in such case, legal stability is guaranteed.
The legal system for the creditor's right to revoke is necessary to protect the grieved creditor by controlling the debtor and the beneficiary or the prior holder with bad faith. However, the beneficiary or the prior holder is also the creditor to be protected. The legal system of the creditor's right to revoke must be operated to reasonably and fairly protect the benefit of both the creditor and the beneficiary or the prior holder under the fairness doctrine.