Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 12, 2025
5 So, too, the obligation of an heir to discharge legacies cannot properly be called contractual, for it cannot be said that the legatee has contracted at all with either the heir or the testator: yet, as the heir is not bound by a delict, his obligation would seem to be quasicontractual.
6 Again, a person to whom money not owed is paid by mistake is thereby laid under a quasicontractual obligation; an obligation, indeed, which is so far from being contractual, that, logically, it may be said to arise from the extinction rather than from the formation of a contract; for when a man pays over money, intending thereby to discharge a debt, his purpose is clearly to loose a bond by which he is already bound, not to bind himself by a fresh one.
2 Guardians, again, who can be sued by the action on guardianship, cannot properly be said to be bound by contract, for there is no contract between guardian and ward: but their obligation, as it certainly does not originate in delict, may be said to be quasicontractual.
3 Again, where persons own property jointly without being partners, by having, for instance, a joint bequest or gift made to them, and one of them is liable to be sued by the other in a partition suit because he alone has taken its fruits, or because the plaintiff has laid out money on it in necessary expenses: here the defendant cannot properly be said to be bound by contract, for there has been no contract made between the parties; but as his obligation is not based on delict, it may be said to be quasicontractual.
Such legacies, although paid when not due, cannot be reclaimed. Having thus gone through the classes of contractual and quasicontractual obligations, we must remark that rights can be acquired by you not only on your own contracts, but also on those of persons in your power that is to say, your slaves and children.
Those obligations are civil which are established by statute, or at least are sanctioned by the civil law; those are praetorian which the praetor has established by his own jurisdiction, and which are also called honorary. 2 By another division they are arranged in four classes, contractual, quasicontractual, delictal, and quasidelictal.
Having enumerated the different kinds of contracts, let us now examine those obligations also which do not originate, properly speaking, in contract, but which, as they do not arise from a delict, seem to be quasicontractual.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking