Chinese Law of Marital Community Debt in the Context of Private Lending Disputes

Abstract

Relevant rules in Chinese law on the identification of marital common debts was greatly controversial before the Supreme People’s Court’s issuance of the Interpretation on Some Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Marital Debt Disputes in January 2018. The contradiction between legislation and judicial interpretations led to many difficulties in judicial practice. The promulgation of the new judicial interpretation perfected the rules for the identification of marital debts to some extent. Article 1064 of the Civil Code sets out the criteria for determining the marital community debt. However, the meaning of marital joint debt is general and ambiguous, lacking uniform standards. On this basis, this paper studies the identification of marital community debt in the context of private lending in China, explores the shortcomings of Article 1064 of the newly promulgated Chinese Civil Code and puts forward corresponding countermeasures to further optimize and solve the issue of marital community debt in the future.