Penalty For Not Sleeping At Home?
This story is based off a real case that was published by the Supreme Court, numbered 89.
Jack and Jill are a married couple with a daughter aged 5. Jack works as a PE teacher while Jill stays at home and takes care of Jill full time. Since a few months ago, Jack had been not returning home at night for more than half the time. There was always a reason for not returning home. It was either meeting clients, overtime work, or sleepover at a bro's house.
Jill did not buy his stories, as after all, what clients would a PE teacher have? What overtime work would a PE teacher have? After an intense quarrel, they reached a decision that if Jack did were not in bed from 12 am to 7 pm, he would have to pay 100 RMB per hour as "empty bed fees".
Unfortunately, Jack still kept to his old habits and did not go home at night. After another intense fight, Jack wrote an IOU of 4000 RMB as empty bed fees.
Is such an agreement enforceable?
For this story, I am going to give you an explanation for both sides.
Jill's side:
The agreement between Jack and Jill is an agreement between equal civil entities (natural persons) which belongs to the norms of legal conduct, and therefore the two parties have established a civil legal relationship. As the principle of civil law goes, no prohibition by law is freedom. The agreement does not violate any provisions of laws and administrative regulations, is true and effective, and is legally binding.
Jack's side:
The agreement of Jack and Jill on the empty bed fee is classified as a non-legally binding social activity. It is an unintentional establishment of legal rights and obligations between the two parties, is based on good morals and merely to promote friendship.
One of the characteristics of a non-legally binding social activity is that neither party intends to establish legal rights and obligations. The agreement between the two is only to urge Jack to go home on time and to promote a harmonious relationship between the couple. The original intention is not to set up legal obligations for Jack, and hence not legally binding.
A good example of a non-legally binding social activity would be an invitiation to dinner. You simply cannot sue somebody for not honouring their promise of taking you out to dinner and the movies.
However, it is worth mentioning that Xiaolu’s frequent absence at night is a violation of his cohabitation obligation.
Civil Code
Article 133
Civil juristic act is the act of establishing, changing, and terminating a civil legal relationship by a civil subject through an expression of will.
Article 1043
Families should establish a good family style, promote family virtues, and value the construction of family civilization.
Husbands and wives should be loyal to each other, respect each other, and love each other; family members should respect the old and love the young, help each other, and maintain an equal, harmonious, and civilized marriage and family relationship.
Please note that this is a machine translation and there is no official translation of the Civil Code yet as it is extremely new and will come in effect on the 1st of Jan, 2021
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