Change and Termination of Obligation in Conditions of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The article deals with the traditional (within objective civil law) and newly introduced by the latest domestic legislation to combating the pandemic COVID-19 provisions about obligation change and termination in terms of identifying special criteria that can determine the obligations’ dynamics during the quarantine restrictions. Emphasis is placed on the need to take into account the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related quarantine measures and restrictions on all elements of the obligation’s structure — its subjects, object and content. Readers’ attention is drawn to the consequences of the external negative impact of any emergencies on both regulatory and security obligations. At the same time, the implicit temporary nature of the quarantine introduced by the Government determines the priority of specially constructed models of direct legislative change of legal relations over ordinary models of their change or termination due to dispositive expression of interested participants of such civil relations. And the dynamics of security obligations in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic is manifested primarily in the introduction of various moratoriums on the application of certain measures of civil liability and/or compulsory recovery on the property of the defaulting debtor. «Anti-pandemic» legislation establishes special grounds for changing and terminating obligation, both regulatory and protective. The publication criticizes the introduction of guarantees that are not individualized by subject and independent of the actual consequences of the negative impact on the property interests of the parties to civil relations, as this may cast doubt on their compliance with the principles of justice, reasonableness and good faith. At the same time, we are supporting the desire of a legislator in various emergencies to take special measures to protect the property interests of consumers as weak partners of obligation relations on provision of housing and communal services, as well as individuals — landlords. After all, this is a priority area for each person’s life, because the place of residence of an individual appears as a material basis for the organization of his private life, the implementation of the widest range of personal non-property rights.