A real treaty in Roman law is called an agreement, the conclusion of which implies the transfer of a certain thing from one of the parties to the other. Unlike simple informal agreements, a real agreement has certain grounds for entry into force, and also provides for the obligation of one of the parties to return the property received earlier.
Treaty in Roman Law
In Roman law, there is no explicit and clear definition of a contract as a type of obligation. However, from the characteristics of individual contracts, it can be established that any contract is mainly an agreement of two parties with legal consequences.
Real contracts differed from all others in the simplicity of the order of implementation. No formalities were required to conclude them. An agreement and a thing transferred from one of the parties to the other was enough.
The second feature of real contracts was that they were never abstract, they were always implemented only on a certain basis.
In Roman law, four types of contracts were of great importance: mortgage, loan, loan, storage.
Real contract
A real contract is a contract that establishes obligations determined by the parties through the transfer of a thing. There were several types of real contracts:
Mortgage agreement
This type of contract was characterized by the fact that the thing was transferred by the debtor to the creditor for a certain amount of money received from the creditor. If this sum of money was not returned on time, then the debtor lost the thing transferred to the creditor, and it became the property of the latter. The obligations of the creditor included an attentive and careful attitude to the thing, since it could be returned to the debtor in the event of payment of the debt.
Loan agreement
This type of contract was characterized by the fact that one of the parties (the lender) transferred to the other party (the lender) a thing for free use for some time. Later, the receiving party was obliged to return the thing at the end of the term of use intact. The borrower was fully responsible for the safety of the received item. The exceptions were cases when a thing was damaged by accident.
The loan in this agreement was given for a strictly defined time, but there was also a type of loan that could be provided “on demand”. She was called the precarious.
Loan agreement
In this type of contract, one of the parties (the lender) provided the other party (the borrower) with things or a certain amount of money. The borrower's obligation was that after the expiry of a predetermined period or on demand, he had to return the specified things and money.
Storage agreement
This agreement was characterized by the fact that one of the parties (the depositor) transferred to the other party (the depositary) a thing for free storage for a certain period. The thing did not have to belong to the depositor, it could also be someone else's property.
Under this agreement, the depositary did not become either the owner, the owner of the thing, he only kept it for the period specified in the agreement. He had no right to use this thing, rent it out or rent it. Since the contract was free of charge, the depositary was not required to pay special attention to this matter. But in the event of intentional damage or damage as a result of gross negligence, he had to compensate for all damage caused to someone else's property.
