Spanish Courts reject applying the ‘rebus sic stantibus‘ clause, alleging that the death cannot be considered “unforeseeable”
The Provincial Court of Albacete rejects applying the rebus sic stantibus clause when one of the co-owners of a mortgage loan dies, ensuring that the death of a family member cannot be considered an unforeseeable alteration when it falls within the normal risks of the contract.
In the present case, Justice has rejected a widow’s request to modify the conditions agreed upon in the loan that she and her late husband had signed with a bank. She requested a 50% reduction in the monthly mortgage payment, alleging the existence of force majeure determining the variation of the initially agreed conditions.
The request for reduction was based on the fact that her husband and co-owner of the loan had died, her children and heirs having renounced her inheritance, which would have caused a substantial variation of the conditions initially agreed upon due to force majeure, since she lacked income to pay the loan fee.
The appealing Court has reiterated the jurisprudential doctrine: The modification of the circumstances at the time of the conclusion of the contract must be totally unforeseeable so that they can cause the modification or even the resolution of the same, and that the extinction of the obligations regulated in Articles 1182 and 1184 of the Civil Code are not applicable to debts for payment of money, nor when the alteration of the circumstances at the time of conclusion of the contract consists of the death of a family member such as the husband.
Such an event cannot be described as unforeseeable since contingencies related to the health of either the contracting party or relatives, affecting their solvency, are foreseeable.. Such circumstance does not constitute in said cases a case of application of the doctrine of the rebus sic stantibus clause.”