Understanding Legal Acts: Types, Conditions, and Validity

Posted on Dec 12, 2024 in Law & Jurisprudence

Positive and Negative Legal Facts

Legal facts are divided into positive, for example, the crime of damage, and negative, for example, the omission of the owner who fails to take precautions for the safety of their tenants.

Acts

The most important legal acts are human acts. The event is an action, execution, or mode of action and usually involves will. A willingness to perform the act joins the intention to create, modify, transfer, or terminate legal relationships. When this occurs, these legal facts are named legal acts.

Various Species of Legal Acts

  • Unilateral: Unilateral legal acts involve only the will of one party in their execution, for example, donation and will, since here the only ones required are the testator and the donor.
  • Bilateral: These are the acts in which both parties are bound respectively toward each other. The words synallagmatic and bilateral mean binding on both parties. In such a sale, the seller is obliged to deliver the thing sold and the buyer to deliver the agreed price.
  • Onerous: Onerous means costly (for consideration) when each of the parties involved in the celebration of the act undertakes to give or do something, resulting in mutual benefit upon its conclusion and charges, such as a sale, lease, etc.
  • Gratuitous: This is when one party seeks to obtain an advantage for the other without getting any profit for himself. (The charges are for only one party).
  • Inter Vivos: When their effects are produced during the lifetime of the parties who perform them, such as marriage, sale, etc.
  • Mortis Causa: These are the acts whose effects are produced after the death of the person who held them, for example, a will.
  • Commutative: Those acts in which the benefits should be immediately certain for the parties, such as buying and selling.
  • Aleatory: Those that rely on an uncertain future event. It is impossible to know at the time of holding the burden or benefit to be obtained, e.g., a bet.
  • Instantaneous: These are the events whose impact is felt at the time of their conclusion.
  • Successive Tract: Those whose effects are prolonged in time.

Conditions for the Existence of Legal Acts

  • The Will: It is said to have the courage, the willingness to perform the act.
  • The Object: This is the second requirement of existence of the act. It cannot exist when it does not matter (object); this may be one or a fact.
  • Solemnities: Not only are will and purpose required in certain legal acts, but it is also necessary to be held before the law states that people (officials) and that those involved in its celebration pronounce certain words or phrases both required by law. For example, in marriage (a legal act), to be held before a registrar (civil servants) and consist of the solemn celebration of the event to the official and the words that both it and the parties must pronounce at the time of celebration.

Conditions of Validity of Legal Acts

  • Absence of defects of will
  • Capacity of the parties
  • Formalities

Absence of Defects of Will

The circumstances that in any way invalidate the will are called defects of the will, and these are:

  • Error: This is a belief that is inconsistent with the truth; it is a false concept of reality.
  • Fraud: Fraud means any suggestion or contrivance that is used to mislead or keep any of the parties involved in the act.
  • Violence: There is violence when physical force or threats that pose a threat are used.
  • Lesion: The lesion is compared to the errors of the will and means that one, exploiting the sum of ignorance, inexperience, or notorious extreme misery of another, gets a profiteering, obviously disproportionate to what he, in turn, enters.

Capacity of the Parties

Capacity is the ability in law for a person to be the subject of rights and obligations. If the person is not qualified, acts performed under such conditions will be invalid.

Formalities

The formalities are to give to the act of writing.

Differences Between Solemnities and Formalities

  • Solemnities are required for existence, while formalities are for validity.
  • Solemnities involve the use of certain words, while formalities require giving the act in writing.
  • The lack of solemnities cannot be amended. Formalities can; just give the act as directed.
  • The lack of solemnities causes the absence of the act; the lack of formalities causes annulment.

Modalities of Legal Acts

Conditions are the facts or circumstances that limit the willingness of the parties and on which the birth of the act, its extinction, or the way it is done depends.

The conditions are two: the condition and term.

  • The Condition: A condition is a future event of uncertain realization on which the birth or termination of the effects of a legal act depends.
  • Term: The term is an inevitable future event (the way) on which the start or termination of the effects of the measure depends.

The Law

Definition

The law is defined as a rule of law enacted, promulgated, and sanctioned by public authority, even without the consent of individuals, and aims at the prosecution of social activity for the common good.

Features of the Law

  • It is a rule of law.
  • It emanates from public power, which dictates its enactment and sanctions.
  • It is aimed at achieving the common good.