LAS DEUDAS DEL CAUSANTE Y LA SUCESIÓN DE LOS ARRENDAMIENTOS URBANOS.

Abstract

The question is whether or not the successor to a lease must assume borrower's status with respect to the whole of the successoral liabilities existing on the date of the succession, instead of assuming borrower's status only with respect to the liability under the lease. When it is a question of housing leases, the answer to this question is yes, and the successor to a lease assumes said liabilities on the basis of a charter that is basically liquidation-based. Under this charter, the successor to the lease assumes the debts of the deceased, but limits himself to offering, in payment of such debts, solely and exclusively that which he has received by succession, i.e., the lease itself. This charter is single and can encompass all sorts of obligations, be they obligations to give, to do or to refrain from doing. When the creditor of the deceased is the lessor, the liquidation-based charter of the successor to the lease has no substance for the lessor. This is because the lessor will only be able to call upon the ordinary successors (not the successors to leases), regardless of the nature of the lease-related duties, be they duties to give, to do or to refrain from doing, And if these ordinary successors fail to pay the lease-related debts of the deceased, the only channel left to the lessor is to file directly for eviction, because he cannot oblige the successors to the lease to anything more than that. On the other hand, succession to nonhousing leases is basically ordinary mortis causa succession. The Urban Leasing Act simply repeats that the principle of mortis causa transmissibility operates in non-housing leases, and the rules governing succession in such leases refer back to the common rules of the law on succession. An exception is made, however, for the type of succession established in transitional provision 3, where the successor of the lease holds strict capacity as a liquidator, the same as a successor to a housing lease.