Legislation in Times of Economic Recession against Mortgage Drama. Family, Justice and Legal Certainty

Abstract

For the past couple of years the economic recession has led to an unstoppable, constant progression of thousands of mortgage executions. This creates a social drama for many families. While society was claiming for justice, legislators were not paying much attention to such a dantesque scene, in a pitiless mood, without being able to do much as they faced the need to preserve the legal certainty of the mortgage system together with the contracts binding force. Nevertheless, legislators finally realized this situation disclosing a series of laws which, far from being easily forgotten will become the basis of a recession law somehow unusual in the history of Spanish law, due to the break of certain legal statements and to the legal comeback of the spirit behind the rebus sic stantibus term.