Neúčinnost právních jednání dlužníka

The Supreme Court recently issued a decision (file no. 29 ICdo 15/2024) that has the potential to significantly impact the current practice of challenging debtors’ legal acts in insolvency proceedings. This concerns situations where the debtor repays their debt before the commencement of insolvency proceedings, and the insolvency administrator subsequently claims that the creditor was preferentially treated by this payment compared to other creditors.

The dispute in question involved the payment of agreed interest on a loan by a debtor who was insolvent. Lower courts considered these payments to be ineffective legal acts because, in their view, the debtor did not receive any adequate consideration at the time of paying the interest. This approach largely reflected the prevailing opinion in the legal community. However, the Supreme Court rejected this interpretation. It emphasized that a loan agreement represents an equivalent relationship: the lender provides funds immediately, and the borrower subsequently repays them, possibly with interest as the “price of money.” The debtor thus obtains consideration at the moment the funds are provided, even though this precedes the later interest payments in time, and the temporal sequence therefore does not constitute an obstacle in assessing equivalence.

The Supreme Court therefore concluded that proper payment of interest agreed in the contract does not constitute a performance without adequate consideration and by itself does not establish a preferential legal act within the meaning of the Insolvency Act. This conclusion also represents a shift from the previously rather restrictive approach, under which the concept of “adequate consideration” was interpreted in relation to a specific partial performance rather than the entire contractual relationship.

The decision may lead insolvency administrators to be more cautious when challenging standard financial payments and may simultaneously provide greater legal certainty to creditors.

Authors:
Vladimír Petráček
Jonáš Kozák
Matěj Šimpach