What is the right to claim?
Thus, the contract may give rise to a payment claim addressed to the party to be paid (the debtor), from the party who wants to be paid (the creditor). Such a situation can be dealt with by the law of claims.
How a claim arises cannot be said in general terms, but depends on the circumstances of the individual case and what constitutes an appropriate application of the provision in question. When the Bankruptcy Act (1987:672) was introduced, a principle of a general nature was formulated concerning the origin of a claim. The bill for the Act states that the decisive basis for a claim to a receivable must already exist at the time of the decision for the bankruptcy, in order to be able to assert the claim in the bankruptcy.
What is a claim?
What is meant by a claim can be said to be a type of right for someone to demand a specific performance from someone else, which they are obliged to do against the person holding the right. Most often, a claim is a monetary claim, meaning that one party demands money from another party.
A claim can also be a claim in kind, which means that the party that has a claim in kind against it must perform some kind of service that does not involve money.
A claim and a debt are two concepts that can easily be taken to mean the same thing.
To clarify the matter, the concepts can be said to be two sides of the same coin. A claim is the obligation the creditor has on the debtor to perform a certain service. A debt is what the debtor has to pay to the creditor.
What is a promissory note and how does it relate to debt law?
If a debtor takes out a loan from a bank, a promissory note is drawn up. A promissory note can thus be seen as a unilateral written document in which the debtor undertakes to pay a certain amount of money to a specific creditor. The unilateral nature of the promissory note means that the performance of paying money does not depend on any other additional consideration. Looking back at the example of the bank loan, the promissory note means that only the debtor has to perform, to pay, the bank does not have to perform anything in return.
Promissory notes can also be found in other situations, such as in the case of credit purchases, student loans, installment payments or loans from private individuals.
Promissory notes come in two forms: simple and promissory notes. The promissory note is made out to a named person, the holder or order. Since the promissory note gives the creditor the right to claim money from the debtor, the creditor to whom the note is made must be able to present it in order to receive payment. The promissory note can be seen as a proof of payment, which gives the creditor the right to claim money from the debtor. If the debtor pays without being able to see the promissory note, he or she may be obliged to pay again when the promissory note is subsequently shown by the creditor and the creditor invokes his or her right.
In contrast to the current promissory note, the simple promissory note does not confer any right per se. The holding of a simple promissory note therefore does not give rise to a right to payment. The simple promissory note should therefore be seen solely as proof of the existence of a claim. This means that it is relatively easy to transfer a simple promissory note; it is only necessary to inform the debtor that the creditor has transferred the note to the transferee.
A debt may become due if the final payment date has passed. The due date is usually specified in the contract. If the contract does not specify when the due date is, the debtor must pay when requested by the creditor. The general rule is that a claim is time-barred after 10 years. In consumer relationships, however, a claim is time-barred three years after the last payment date.
Many individuals think that promissory notes and receivables are foreign concepts, but they are often used in everyday life, albeit under different names. For example, an invoice is a type of debt, but not a promissory note, precisely because the time limit for invoices is often much shorter than for promissory notes, which often have a time limit of several years.
