Tsopina N. The Life-Maintenance (care) contract under the Civil Law of Ukraine

The thesis is focused on the comprehensive study of the life care contract under the Civil Law of Ukraine. Main genesis features and patterns of the current state of the life care contract were defined. Historical development stages under our domestic legislation were systematized. Legal regulation of life care relations under the legal frameworks of foreign countries was revealed. Main doctrinal approaches of concept understanding and legal natures of the life care contract in the modern age were detected. Special attention was paid to notarial actions characterization as to the identification of the property that may be object of the life care contract. The role of the notary while establishing the contracting parties of the life care contract was defined. The peculiarities of the notarial certification of the life care contract and registration of rights to immovable property were discovered. It was established that substantial contribution to the study of life care was made by foreign researchers, mostly by Western ones. The life care relations in European countries were developed significantly starting upon the state recognition of annuity contract and have existed in various forms, namely contract of sale, gift contract, subject to recurring payments, etc. Three international development stages of contractual relations of life care were formed. The first stage – life care contract is the variation of annuity contracts. The second stage – it is getting the features of independent contractual type. At the third stage the life care contract becomes one of the contractual types to transfer the property into ownership. It was suggested that life care contract should be considered as way to realize the natural persons’ right of a civil law character for the social security, as well as the possibility to acquire ownership over residential property or other valuable property at no substantial monetary funds that are compensated for the physical and property efforts made to take care of the transferor. The general concept stating that life care of person shall be considered as a sort of reciprocal performance of obligation, rather than as the cost of alienated property. Thus, the scope of compensatory nature under the life care relations shall be understood to mean compensatory nature that, as a rule, is usually inconsistent with the equivalence principle of material mutual compensation obligations, since the level of benefits alienated by the parties depends on the lifetime of the transferor and on benefits (services) provision period by the transferee. It was determined that transferor’s obligations under the life care contract are actually satisfied upon the transfer into transferee’s ownership the pledged immovable property, as well as property of significant value. But instead, the transferee assumes obligations to meet all the requirements as to the implementation of all the actions required to cover the material needs of the transferor and to take care of this transferor. Comparative legal analysis of legislative improvements with regard to the “registration of rights” as opposed to the “registration of deed” has shown that the registration itself is the legal fact of the set of facts that shall exist in order to give legal effect to the purposes of life care contract. The ownership interest in property, rather than the deed, is the registration object. Therefore, the registration has legal effect not only when ownership over newly created immovable property is registered, but basically relative to immovable property as well. The undertaken study gave rise to a wide range of theoretical proposals and practical recommendations aimed at improving the current legislation and court practice in legal relations of life care contract.