The Joint Debtor’s Defenses in Accordance with the Provisions of the Jordanian Civil Code: Comparative Study with the Qatari Civil Law
Prof. Abdulrahman Ahmed Joma’a
Professor of Civil Law School of Law University of Jordan
Abstract
Solidarity between debtors means that multiple debtors have a single obligation which can be divided stating that each of them on the basis of a special agreement or a provision of the law is obliged to perform all debt at the request, that is, the creditor has the right to require all or any of them to fulfill the full debt, and that the debtor cannot claim the partial execution in proportion to his/her share. The Jordanian and Qatari Civil Law recognizes that the debt owed by one of the debtors to the creditor acquires the debts of the rest of the debtors. The Jordanian civil law, like the Qatari, Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi civil law, differs in determining the sources of solidarity between the debtors from the Moroccan obligations and contracts Law and from the Lebanese obligations and contracts law, which added other sources to those mentioned in the said laws. Solidarity between debtors results in multiple links between the creditor and the debtors, since all of them are bound by the solidarity bond, as well as with each of them with a special association that differs from that of other debtors. In application of the multiplicity of links, the legislator allowed the debtor to adhere to its own defences, and other debtors could not abide by them. The legislator authorized any debtor to uphold the common defences of debtors. The legal requirement relating to the subject in question, which was presented to the legislator, raises many problems, which led us to discuss it and, as a result, we wish to intervene to amend the legal requirements that we have referred to in this paper.