José Manuel de Torres Perea

Coordinador

Abstract:
In the Spanish Civil Code, contracts can be rescinded in certain cases and certain contracts are considered defective for want of any of the three essential requisites—consent, subject-matter, and cause. The Philippine Civil Code, enacted in 1949, sought to refine this by providing a more finely tuned classification of these defective contracts. Thus, in the Philippine Civil Code, defective contracts are enumerated in a more or less meticulously graduated order of irregularity: (1) the rescissible, (2) the voidable, (3) the unenforceable, and (4) the void or inexistent. In this paper, the author discusses the four kinds of defective contracts in the Philippine legal system. Along with discussing the requisites for the applicability of each defective contract, the author outlines the important Philippine jurisprudential guidelines that evolved since the Philippine Civil Code’s enactment about six-and-a-half decades ago. Keywords:
Philippines, Philippine Civil Code, Defective Contracts, Rescissible Contracts, Voidable Contracts, Unenforceable Contracts, Void Contracts, Inexistent Contracts.