Accession to debt is one of a number of instruments developed by foreign and domestic legal systems to secure contractual obligations. Primarily, accession to debt is a contract between a creditor and a third party by which the latter undertakes to fulfil the debtor's obligation. In addition, accession to debt may also arise by law where the creditor has consented to assume the debt, but it turns out that the assignee was over-indebted at the time of the consent, and the creditor did not know, nor could have known, that this was the case. Lastly, the Slovenian legal system recognizes an accession to debt in the case of the acquisition of assets, which is a special form of accession to debt. The master's thesis first presents the basic theoretical aspects of each of these forms of accession to debt. The body of the thesis then addresses a topical issue that is often raised by theory in relation to the accession to debt, namely that it is a weak instrument, that it is rarely used in practice and should therefore be removed from the Obligations Code. Thus, the aim of the thesis is, on the basis of recent theoretical findings, domestic case law and a review of foreign legal systems, to determine whether the existence of the accession to debt, as known in the Slovenian legal system, is justified and whether it provides an effective protection of contractual obligations.
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