Если срок действия гарантии и поручительства не установлен, они прекращаются, если кредитор в течение одного года со дня наступления срока обеспеченного гарантией или поручительством обязательства не предъявит иска к гаранту или поручителю. Когда срок исполнения основного обязательства не указан, или не может быть определен, или определен моментом востребования, поручительство и гарантия прекращаются, если кредитор не предъявит иска к гаранту или поручителю в течение двух лет со дня заключения договора гарантии или поручительства.
Срок действия гарантии или поручительства, разумеется, должен быть более продолжительным, чем срок действия основного обязательства и достаточно продолжительным, чтобы успеть уладить все формальности, связанные с возможным предъявлением иска к гаранту и поручителю, в противном случае теряется практическое значение данных обеспечительных средств.
Срок для заявления требований к гаранту и поручителю носит особый характер. В научной и учебной литературе его обычно именуют пресекательным сроком или специальным давностным сроком. Его особенностью является то, что его истечение служит основанием не к вынесению судом решения об отказе в иске, а к прекращению поручительства и гарантии, поэтому он не подлежит восстановлению судом. Это означает, что кредитор должен в период действия гарантии или поручительства успеть обратиться к гаранту или поручителю с требованием об уплате долга и заявить иск в суд, если такая оплата произведена не будет. Данное обстоятельство не актуально для правоприменения в России, где претензионный порядок рассмотрения споров между юридическими лицами отменен, и требование об уплате долга означает одно - обращение с иском в суд. Правда, в российской юридической литературе высказан иной взгляд. Л.А. Новоселова полагает, что если в договоре установлена форма требования к поручителю (простая письменная, претензия и др.), то кредитор вправе предъявить иск к поручителю в пределах срока исковой давности по основному обязательству. При отсутствии в договоре поручительства условия о форме предъявления требования следует исходить из того, что к поручителю до истечения указанного в нем срока должно быть предъявлено исковое требование.
Рассматриваемый срок является самостоятельной разновидностью сроков в гражданском праве. Он сочетает в себе черты и срока исковой давности, и пресекательного срока. В пресекательную природу этого срока вписываются черты давностного срока, а из давностной природы, напротив, исчезают такие важные признаки, как императивность, возможность продления. В отличие от срока исковой давности, истечение которого не погашает самого права, а лишь ограничивает возможности его защиты, он погашает самое право. Поэтому уплата долга по истечении срока исковой давности не дает должнику права потребовать исполненное обратно, в то время как уплата гарантом или поручителем долга за должника после истечения срока гарантии или поручительства означает неосновательное обогащение кредитора, и уплаченные суммы подлежат возврату.
Когда законодательство говорит о предъявлении требований к гаранту и поручителю, то важен контекст нормы. Обычно под требованием имеется в виду исковое требование. Но дело в том, что сам смысл гарантии и поручительства предполагает предварительное обращение к гаранту и поручителю за получением долга. Такое обращение может и не являться претензией. Более того, оно, в целом, не является даже необходимым. Но порой важна формальная определенность и поэтому, например, ст. 374 ГК РФ устанавливает для предъявления требований к гаранту по банковской гарантии письменную форму и реквизиты требования. Но это не претензия. Нарушение установленных законом формальных моментов может повлечь осложнение доказательственной стороны процесса, а не отказ в иске и не может оказать какого бы то ни было влияния на продолжительность срока для заявления иска, заканчивающегося при любых обстоятельствах в последний день срока действия гарантии.
Иногда на практике п. 4 ст. 336 ГК пытаются истолковывать следующим образом. При неопределенности срока действия договора гарантии или поручительства, равно как и неопределенности срока исполнения основного обязательства данная норма прямо указывает время для предъявления иска, но ничего не говорит о предъявлении иска по этим договорам со сроком их прекращения. Следовательно, в последнем случае закон имеет в виду необходимость заявления до истечения этого срока требования к гаранту или поручителю, а если они его не выполнят, то иск может быть предъявлен к ним в пределах общего трехлетнего срока исковой давности. Однако, подлинный смысл указания в п. 4 ст. 336 ГК на годичный и двухгодичный сроки предъявления иска состоит в том, чтобы определить конечный момент существования поручительства и гарантии, когда в тексте договора такой момент не определен, а не в том, чтобы противопоставить последствия для гарантий и поручительств с определенным сроком действия последствиям гарантий и поручительств с неопределенным сроком действия. Право кредитора на получение долга с гаранта и поручителя и возможность защиты этого права прекращались бы и тогда, если бы в п. 4 ст. 336 ГК было сказано, что поручительство и гарантия последнего вида прекращают свое действие соответственно в годичный и двухгодичный срок без упоминания того, что в этот срок нужно предъявить иск. Кроме того, приведенное толкование необоснованно осложняет положение поручителя и гаранта, которые будут в течение трех лет или более находиться под угрозой ответственности за должника, хотя они установили срок действия договора именно для определения временных границ своей ответственности. С изложенной позицией, одновременно показывающей неточность упоминавшегося мнения о возможности в отдельных случаях предъявления иска к поручителю в пределах исковой давности по основному обязательству, совпадает аргументация, использованная при рассмотрении следующего дела, включенного в уже цитированный нами Обзор практики Высшего Арбитражного Суда России по спорам, связанным с поручительством. В связи с неисполнением обязательства основным должником кредитор предъявил платежное требование, оплачиваемое без акцепта, к счету поручителя в течение срока действия поручительства. В договоре поручительства было установлено, что оно выдано на один год с момента заключения договора. Иск был заявлен по истечении срока, установленного договором поручительства. Первоначально иск был удовлетворен с мотивировкой, что п. 4 ст. 376 ГК России (совпадающий по содержанию с п. 4 ст. 336 ГК РК) не предусматривает обязательного предъявления иска в течение определенного договором поручительства срока. Такое требование законодательство предусматривает лишь для случаев, когда срок поручительства договором не установлен. При отмене этого решения Высший Арбитражный Суд России указал, что в силу п. 4 ст. 367 ГК Российской Федерации поручительство прекращается по истечении указанного в договоре поручительства срока, на который оно дано. Поскольку в данном случае кредитор обратился к поручителю с иском по истечении срока действия поручительства, основываясь на прекратившемся обязательстве, основания для удовлетворения иска за счет поручителя отсутствовали.
Усложненным вариантом порядка исчисления срока для предъявления иска по гарантии и поручительству может служить случай, когда в гарантии или поручительстве названа точная дата уплаты долга за основного должника, например, в такой формулировке: "если должник не исполнит обязательства до 1 марта 1998 г., то оплата долга по требованию кредитора будет произведена поручителем 1 мая 1998 г.". Казалось бы, возникает нелепая ситуация, при которой кредитор не может предъявить иск к гаранту или поручителю до 1 мая, поскольку срок исполнения обязанности гаранта или поручителя еще не наступил, и не может этого сделать после 1 мая, так как гарантия или поручительство прекратили свое действие. В действительности же, 1 мая - это не срок прекращения гарантии или поручительства (если, разумеется, иное не указано в договоре), а срок исполнения обязанности гаранта или поручителя, поэтому иск может быть предъявлен в пределах одного года со дня наступления срока исполнения основного обязательства, если срок действия гарантии или поручительства не определен, либо до дня прекращения гарантии или поручительства, - если такой срок в договоре указан.
Разумеется, срок предъявления иска к гаранту и поручителю никак не связан со сроками прохождения спора в суде, которые могут значительно превышать сроки гарантии и поручительства.
Кроме истечения сроков, поручительство и гарантия прекращаются: с прекращением обеспеченного ими обязательства; в случае изменения этого обязательства, влекущего неблагоприятные последствия для поручителя и гаранта, произведенного без согласия последних; при переводе долга по обеспеченному обязательству, если гарант и поручитель не согласны отвечать за нового должника.
GUARANTY AND SURETYSHIP
by
Professor Anatoly Didenko
Article 329. Guaranty
1. By virtue of a guaranty, the guarantor undertakes an obligation to the creditor of another person (the debtor) to be liable primarily with the debtor for the performance of that person's debt, in full or in part, except in cases provided by legislative act.
2. Persons jointly giving a guaranty shall be primarily liable to the creditor, unless otherwise established by the contract of guaranty.
3. A contract of guaranty may also secure a debt that will arise in the future.
Article 330. Suretyship
By virtue of a suretyship, the surety undertakes an obligation to the creditor of another person (the debtor) to be secondarily liable for the satisfaction of that person's debt, in full or in part.
Article 331. Basis and Form of Guaranty and Suretyship
1. Guaranty and suretyship shall arise on the basis of contracts of suretyship and contracts of guaranty. The use of a guaranty may be required by law.
2. Contracts of guaranty and suretyship must be executed in written form. Contracts of guaranty and suretyship that are not in written form shall be void.
3. Contracts of guaranty and suretyship shall be considered to be in written form if the guarantor or surety has informed the creditor in writing that the guarantor or surety is liable for the satisfaction of the debtor's debt, and the creditor has not rejected the proposal of the guarantor or surety within a period of time normally necessary to do so.
Article 332. Liability of the Guarantor or Surety
1. Unless otherwise stipulated by the contract, a guaranty or suretyship shall secure only valid claims. The guarantor and surety shall not be released from liability for the debt of a debtor, if they knew in advance that the debtor lacked capacity and the creditor was unaware of this circumstance.
2. A guarantor shall be liable to the creditor to the same extent as the debtor, including payment of penalties, interest, court costs incurred to collect the debt and other expenses of the creditor caused by the non-performance or inadequate performance of the debtor's debt, unless otherwise stipulated by the contract of guaranty.
3. A surety shall be liable to the creditor up to the amount indicated in the suretyship, unless otherwise provided by the terms of the suretyship. In order to make a demand to the surety, who is secondarily liable, the creditor must make reasonable efforts to obtain satisfaction of the claim from the debtor, including by offset of counterclaims and collection actions in the prescribed manner against the debtor's property.
Article 333. Rights and Obligations of Guarantors When Creditors
Make Claims Against Them
1. A guarantor shall be obligated to notify the debtor before satisfying the claim of the creditor, and if a lawsuit is filed against the guarantor, the guarantor shall be obligated to implead the debtor. Otherwise the debtor shall have the right to use against the cross-claim of the guarantor all the defenses the debtor had against the creditor.
2. A guarantor shall have the right to use against the claim of the creditor the defenses that were available to the debtor, unless it follows otherwise from the contract of guaranty. The guarantor shall not lose the right to these defenses even if the debtor has waived them or acknowledged the debt.
Article 334. Rights of Guarantors and Sureties Who Have
Satisfied Debts
1. A guarantor who has satisfied a debt shall acquire all the rights of the creditor on that debt and the rights belonging to the creditor as pledgee, to the extent that the guarantor has satisfied the claim of the creditor. A guarantor shall also have the right to claim from the debtor penalties and interest on the amount paid to the creditor and other damages the guarantor incurred in relation to its liability for the debtor.
2. Upon performance of the obligation by the guarantor, the creditor shall be required to deliver to the guarantor the documents evidencing the claim against the debtor, and to assign the rights securing the claim.
3. The rules established by Clauses 1 and 2 of this Article shall apply unless otherwise established by law or the guarantor's contract with the debtor, or unless it follows otherwise from the relationship between them.
4. A surety shall acquire the same rights to the extent that the surety has performed the debtor's obligation to the creditor.
Article 335. Notice to the Guarantor and Surety that the Debtor has
Performed the Obligation
A debtor who has performed an obligation secured by a guaranty or suretyship shall be required to notify the guarantor or surety immediately. Otherwise the guarantor or surety, having performed the obligation in turn, shall have the right to collect from the creditor the amount unjustly received, or to make a claim in subrogation against the debtor. In the latter case, the debtor shall have the right to collect from the creditor only the unjustly received amount.
Article 336. Termination of Guaranty and Suretyship
1. Guaranty and suretyship shall terminate upon the termination of the obligation secured by them, and in the event that the obligation is changed so as to increase the liability or bring about other unfavorable consequences for the guarantor or surety without their consent.
2. Guaranty and suretyship shall terminate upon the transfer to another party of the debt on an obligation secured by a guaranty or suretyship, unless the guarantor or surety has given consent to the creditor to be liable for the new debtor.
3. Guaranty and suretyship shall terminate if, after performance of the obligation secured by them has become due, the creditor refuses to accept adequate performance offered by the debtor or by the guarantor or surety.
4. Guaranty and suretyship shall terminate upon the expiration of the time for which they were given, as indicated in the contract of guaranty or suretyship. If such a time is not stipulated, they shall terminate if the creditor does not bring a lawsuit against the guarantor or surety within one year from the time that performance of the obligation secured by the guaranty or suretyship becomes due. If the time of performance of the primary obligation is not indicated and cannot be determined, or if performance is due on demand, the guaranty or suretyship shall terminate if the creditor does not bring a lawsuit against the guarantor or surety within two years of the date on which the contract of guaranty or suretyship was formed, unless otherwise provided by legislative act.
Guaranty and suretyship as methods of securing performance of obligations have already been the subject of commentary in volume 1 of this series.1 However, a Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan adopted on June 11, 1997 made several amendments to the Civil Code. One of the more substantial amendments is a revision of Section 4 of Chapter 18, which concerns guaranty and suretyship as methods of securing the performance of obligations (Civil Code, Articles 320-336).
Reading the text of the amendments could give the impression that the legislator has simply switched the places of "guaranty" and "suretyship" so that what was previously called a guaranty is now a suretyship and vice versa. To a large extent this is exactly what has happened, but this does not explain everything. The first question that arises with regard to the amendments is this: what is the point of making what appears to be a purely terminological substitution that changes the traditional meaning of these two concepts? We know that before the amendments were made, the distinction between guaranty and suretyship was minimized in practice due to the fact that in the vast majority of cases, one of the parties to a guaranty or suretyship was a bank, and as a result the relationship was governed by the rules of banking law, which prevail in the event of conflict with the Civil Code (Civil Code, Article 3.3). The civil law provided that before making a demand to a guarantor, the creditor was required to seek satisfaction from the primary debtor. Under the banking law, the creditor could bypass the primary debtor and recover the debt from the guarantor. This latter rule nullified both the secondary nature of a guaranty and the corresponding provisions of the Civil Code. Thus, the amendments were made to adapt the Civil Code to prevailing banking practice, in which the guarantor is primarily liable. In addition, under government guaranties the state commonly bore primarily liability on the obligations of the debtor. In adopting the amendments, the legislator decided it was more important to make the Civil Code's terminology consistent with banking terms than to make the language of the banking laws consistent with the deep traditions of the civil-law lexicon.
Definition and Characteristics of Guaranty
and Suretyship
The point of guaranty and suretyship is that a certain party assumes liability toward a creditor for the breach of a contract by the primary debtor.
A guaranty is defined as the duty of one party (the guarantor) toward the creditor of another person (the debtor) to answer for the performance of the debtor's obligation (to the full extent of the debt or in part), in primary liability with the debtor. Legislative acts may establish a different system of liability.
The possibility that legislative acts could establish a different form of liability for the guarantor violates the formal distinction between guaranty and suretyship. If a legislative act provides that in certain cases a guarantor is secondarily (rather than primarily) liable, then this should automatically transform the security arrangement into a suretyship. In fact, the only characteristic that distinguishes guaranty from suretyship is the nature of the liability of the guarantor or surety. The logical meaning of any characteristic (or any aggregate of characteristics, in the case of classification by multiple criteria) that distinguishes two or more phenomena is that the characteristic is present in one phenomenon and absent in the other. However, the substance of each of the classified phenomena consists not only in the distinguishing characteristics, but also in additional characteristics. The characteristics of guaranty and suretyship that form the essence of these phenomena are described below. The additional characteristics of various classifications can coincide and intersect, but this should not happen with the distinguishing characteristics, otherwise the purity of the classification is violated, which is what happened when the Civil Code allowed the possibility of secondary liability for a guarantor.
Suretyship is defined as the duty of one party (the surety) toward the creditor of another party (the debtor) to answer for the performance of the debtor's obligation (to the full extent of the debt or in part) in secondary liability (Civil Code, Articles 329, 330).
In a few cases, the status of guarantor or surety gives the guarantor or surety additional legal rights. For example, the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan "On the Registration of Securities Transactions", dated March 6, 1997, permits the disclosure of confidential information on clients and securities records only to a strictly defined set of persons, among which are guarantors and sureties (Article 28).
In the Civil Code of 1964, there was a fundamental difference between the two concepts with regard to the type of party that could act as guarantor or surety. A guaranty could exist only between socialist organizations, one of which was subordinate to the other; while a suretyship could exist either between individuals or between unrelated organizations. The new Civil Code does not distinguish guaranty and suretyship on the basis of who can act in those capacities.
Contracts of guaranty and suretyship must be in writing; otherwise they are void. A written notification by the surety or guarantor to the creditor that the surety or guarantor is assuming liability for the performance of the obligation by the debtor, in the absence of objection by the creditor, satisfies the requirement of a written contract (Civil Code, Article 331). Contracts of guaranty and suretyship may take the form of a separate document, or they may be a part of a primary contract signed by three parties-the creditor, the debtor and the guarantor or surety.
It should be noted that Kazakhstan's law on guaranty and suretyship as methods of securing obligations differs from Russian law. In the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, both of these methods are encompassed by the concept of suretyship; as a general rule the surety is primarily liable with the debtor, but the contract between the parties may provide otherwise. In Russian law, the term "guaranty" is used to describe a special agreement between a bank, other credit institution or insurance company (the guarantor) and a principal, under which a sum of money is paid to the principal's creditor in accordance with the guaranty. The guarantor's duty to pay the money is not related to an obligation secured by the bank guaranty. The Civil Code of Kazakhstan provides separate legal rules for suretyship and guaranty, which, as we will demonstrate below, has led to many unnecessary complications in the application of the law, and has made it impossible to give a logical interpretation to several provisions of the Civil Code.
Suretyship and guaranty secure only valid claims. However, the surety and guarantor are not released from liability if they knew in advance that the debtor lacked capacity and the creditor did not know of this circumstance.
The following table shows the characteristics of guaranty and suretyship under Kazakhstan law.
For sureties and guarantors, the identity of the creditor - the person to whom they may be liable - has a certain significance. The traditional civil-law approach, which is the basis of the rule allowing assignment of claims without the consent of the debtor but permitting transfer of debts only with the consent of the creditor, is that the debtor does not care to whom the debt will be paid, but that the creditor cares a great deal who will pay the debt. In Kazakhstan today, however, this cannot be said so unequivocally. In our current economic situation, for example, the guarantor may care very much who will be demanding payment - a reputable firm or some collection agency owned by former athletes, policemen or security agents. For this reason, in Russia under a bank guaranty claims may be assigned only with the consent of the guarantor. In Kazakhstan, such a proviso may be made in the contract of guaranty or suretyship under Article 339.2 of the Civil Code.
The law may establish specific requirements regarding who may act as a guarantor and the manner of issuing guaranties; if these requirements are followed, the validity of the guaranty may be placed in doubt. Thus, Article 30.3(c) of the Edict of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan "On Banks and Banking Activity", dated August 31, 1995, provides that banks must have a license from the National Bank in order to engage in guaranty operations, i.e. to issue suretyships, guaranties and other obligations for third parties that contemplate performance in monetary form. In several court cases in which banks as guarantors were the defendants, the court has dismissed the claims of creditors on the ground that the guaranties failed to comply with the legislative requirement that a notation by the National Bank accepting the guaranty must appear on the contract of guaranty, and on the ground that the banks lacked the license to issue guaranties.
Because the law now establishes secondary liability for the surety, the question that caused complications in the assignment of liability to guarantors still applies to sureties: how should we understand the rule that before making claims to the surety, the creditor must make reasonable efforts to obtain satisfaction of the claim from the debtor? Naturally, the Code cannot give an interpretation of such a subjective concept as "reasonable efforts"; it merely lists two examples: offset of counterclaims and collection actions on the debtor's property in the prescribed manner.
In Russia, the arbitration courts have moved toward making it easier to collect from the surety by interpreting the concept of the primary debtor's insufficiency of funds as the lack of only monetary funds, without inquiring into what other property the debtor may have.
Guarantors and Sureties
The Civil Code does not impose any restrictions on who may be a guarantor or surety. Legal entities of all organizational forms and individuals may perform these roles. Thus, a bank extending credit to an individual may use another individual's guaranty to secure the repayment of the loan. If the borrower turns out to be dishonest, or becomes ill or unemployed, etc., the guaranty allows the bank to collect the loan from the guarantor, who is primarily liable with the borrower. The law lists no requirements that individual guarantors must meet. In earlier banking practice, sureties were commonly required to provide documents verifying that they have a steady income or other property. Now such requirements must be applied to guarantors.
Because the use of guaranties may be required by law, legislative acts may set certain restrictions regarding which persons may act as guarantors. As indicated above, one such restriction expressly provides that banks must have a license in order to issue guaranties. Sometimes the question is less clear, for instance the issue of what sorts of institutions1 may act as sureties and guarantors. There have been instances in practice when various institutions (provincial departments of the Ministry of Finance, internal affairs administrations, city administrations, local state-property management committees, etc.) have assumed the role of guarantor, as a result of which the problem arose of the extent of their liability for the debtor's non-performance of the obligation.
The particular feature of an institution's liability is that an institution is liable only to the extent of the monetary resources in its possession; if it has insufficient resources, then the owner of the institution bears liability (Civil Code, Article 207). Thus, if state institutions are permitted to act as sureties and guarantors, then the state will likely be held liable for the debts of such institutions. Obviously, such a decision would contradict the logic of the law, which strives to draw a clear distinction between the status of the state and the status of its agencies in the sphere of civil-law relations, including in the area of liability.
The situation becomes even more complicated when we move from the spirit of the law to its letter. Under Article 113.2 of the Civil Code, the Republic of Kazakhstan can be liable for the debts of legal entities if the Civil Code or a legislative act establishes such liability. The rules of Article 207 of the Civil Code, taken together with the rules on guaranties and suretyships, which do not limit the obligations a guarantor or surety may undertake, can be interpreted as giving institutions the right to act as guarantors or sureties and simultaneously placing secondary or primary liability for the debts of the institution on the state as its owner. There is already some precedent for holding the state liable on guaranties issued by state agencies. In February 1998, the Ministry of Finance froze the bank account of the budget of Western Kazakhstan Oblast in order to secure the performance of a guaranty by the akim [governor] of the oblast [province] to repay the debts of agricultural producers in the oblast to the Atyrau Petroleum Refinery, which supplied petroleum products to agricultural consumers under a guaranty from the akim.
An institution does not have the right to dispose of property assigned to it or property acquired through state funding (Civil Code, Article 206.1). Guaranties and suretyships may be viewed as methods of disposing of property, and therefore as illegal actions. However, an institution that earns income may dispose of this income independently; therefore, the issuance of a guaranty or suretyship to the extent of this portion of the institution's property would be legal. An institution in this latter category may be liable on guaranties and suretyships to the extent of property that was acquired using its own income and that is reflected on its separate balance sheet; beyond this, the guaranty or suretyship would be void.
The interpretation suggested above is an attempt to find a way out of a difficult practical situation. Admittedly, this interpretation is something of a stretch. In the first place, the Civil Code does not envisage that an institution's liability is limited to the portion of its property that it received from its own income. Secondly, there is no legal obstacle that would prevent the state, acting through an authorized agency (the State Property Committee, for instance), from approving the issuance of a guaranty or suretyship by an institution; once this approval was received, the same problems of the state's liability for an insolvent institution would arise.
A fundamental resolution of the problem would consist in prohibiting state institutions from acting as guarantors or sureties, and requiring all other institutions to receive the direct approval of their owners to issue guaranties and sureties. Obviously, a more cautious approach should be taken to allowing state enterprises to act as guarantors and sureties, because this is a loophole that could lead to serious financial abuses and squandering of state funds. The Edict of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Having the Force of Law, "On State Enterprises", dated June 5, 1995, contains no such prohibition. By contrast, Ukraine's law of July 5, 1995 prohibits state enterprises from acting as guarantors of bank loans to businesses. A similar prohibition would be advisable for Kazakhstan as well.
Consequences of Performing a Guaranty or Suretyship
A debtor who performs an obligation that is secured by a suretyship or guaranty is required to notify the surety or guarantor of this performance immediately. Failure to give this notice may result in the surety or guarantor performing the obligation again. In this case, the surety or guarantor has a choice: it may collect from the creditor on grounds of unjust enrichment, or it may sue the debtor in subrogation.
When a surety or guarantor performs an obligation, it accedes to the rights of the creditor to the extent to which it satisfied the creditor's claims. Unlike a surety, a guarantor has the additional right to claim from the debtor payment of a penalty or interest on the amount paid to the creditor, along with other damages it incurred by being liable for the debtor. The rules governing the consequences of performance of an obligation by a guarantor are optional: they apply unless otherwise provided by law, contract or the necessary inference of the relationship between the guarantor and the debtor.
Limitation Period for Claims Against
a Guarantor or Surety
Under the general contract-law principle of pacta sunt servanda, a suretyship or guaranty cannot be unilaterally terminated. Therefore, a guarantor or surety does not have the right to withdraw a guaranty or suretyship and refuse to perform its obligations. However, these agreements may be terminated on other grounds. Under Article 336 of the Civil Code, suretyships and guaranties terminate upon the expiration of the term for which they were given, as stipulated in the contract of guaranty or suretyship. These contracts sometimes contain language that the contract of guaranty or suretyship terminates upon the actual performance of the primary obligation. In that case can we say that with such language the contract has designated its own termination date? The answer to this question must be no. Here, the termination of the contract is conditioned upon an event that is probabilistic in nature. Therefore, this situation is governed by the provisions of the Civil Code on the validity of contracts in which no term is specified.1 In the Civil Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan, these provisions are found in Article 336.4.
If the term of a guaranty or suretyship is not stipulated, then such contracts terminate if the creditor does not bring a lawsuit against the guarantor or surety within one year of the date on which the performance of the obligation secured by the guaranty or suretyship becomes due. If the time of performance of the primary obligation is not stipulated or cannot be determined, or if performance is due upon demand, then the suretyship or guaranty terminates if the creditor does not bring an action against the guarantor or surety within two years of the date on which the contract of guaranty or suretyship was formed.
Naturally, the term of a guaranty or suretyship must extend beyond the term of the primary obligation, and be long enough to allow for all the formalities related to the possible filing of a lawsuit against the guarantor or surety; otherwise, these means of securing obligations would lose their practical significance.
There is a special time limit for making claims against a guarantor or surety. It differs from other limitation periods in that its expiration serves as the basis not for a court decision to dismiss a case, but for the termination of the suretyship or guaranty; therefore, it cannot be reinstated by a court. This means that if the guarantor or surety fails to pay the debt, the creditor must make a demand for payment and bring a lawsuit against the guarantor or surety within the term of the guaranty or suretyship.
The limitation period for claims against guarantors and sureties is a separate type of limitation period in civil law. Unlike a traditional limitation period, which does not extinguish the right itself but merely limits the opportunity to enforce it, the limitation period for claims against guarantors and sureties extinguishes the right itself. Therefore, if the debtor inadvertently pays the debt after the expiration of the limitation period, the debtor does not have right to recover the amount paid; at the same time, however, the payment of the debt by the guarantor or surety after the term of the guaranty or suretyship has expired would constitute unjust enrichment of the creditor, and the amount paid would be subject to refund.
