ปัญหาการตีความกฎหมาย “กรณีสัญญาเช่าระงับไปด้วยความตายของผู้เช่า”

Abstract

Lease is a type of legal, binding commercial contract. It plays a key role in driving forward a country's economy. The positive development trajectory of the country gave rise to small-medium business entities, from family-run to partnership limited. In promoting Thai’s economic stability, these localized entities, including local business-centric policies provided by the government, are pivotal. This led us to the utilization of properties such as lands, buildings, mobile vehicles for commercial purposes. As these properties can be costly and almost impossible to purchase at an early stage of business, lease then comes into play. There is a considerable increase of more folks coming to engage in lease agreements than in the past where we would have seen leases occurring mostly to serve agricultural, personal, or some other very specific purposes.

According to Thai's Civil and Commercial Code (CCC), the CCC does not prescribe whether a lease agreement is extinguished upon the death of a lessee. Such occurrences emerged from the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Section 537 and Section 544 as follows:

Section 537: A lease agreement generates mere personal right and not property right.

Section 544: Without lessor’s consent, lessee shall not sublet or transfer leasehold to a third party.

This interpretation results in lease agreement to be a personal right. Hence, once the death of the lessee occurred during the agreement is in effect, a lease agreement is extinguished and does not transfer to successors. The broad interpretation by the Court could result in the successors and/or beneficiaries to be responsible for payment. There are cases where the lessor no longer wishes to continue the lease or subsequently crafts additional conditions, especially price related ones, as they are aware of the other party’s necessity to use the property.

This article aims to respectfully provide suggestions as to why the Supreme Court should revisit its past decisions and perhaps embark on a different direction in interpreting the matter concerning cases of the deceased lessees. This is ultimately to establish a fair, robust policy that is up-to-date with today’s society and economy, one that would harmoniously exist among the laws of foreign nations.