Validity Determination of Husband and Wife Loyalty Agreement from the Perspective of Civil Code

Abstract

With the promulgation of the Civil Code, the duty of loyalty is stipulated as a legal obligation. However, there is no provision for the marital loyalty agreement in the marriage and family part of the Civil Code of China. The validity of the marital loyalty agreement is still controversial in academia, and the problem of different judgments in the same case remains unsolved in practice. Through argumentation, this paper regards the marital loyalty agreement as an atypical contract, the essence of which is the agreement between husband and wife to concretize the legal loyalty obligation based on the autonomy of will. In the process of validity identification, some difficult problems such as vague boundaries of loyalty obligations and the distinction of true meaning expression are put forward and solved. In this paper, typical cases and theories are summarized, and suggestions are put forward for the areas where China's legislation is not perfect, aiming at promoting social stability and safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of marriage parties by loyalty agreement.