Aleatoric contracts in the civil law of Ukraine

The article, based on the analysis of civil literature, considers various author’s positions on the concept, legal nature and qualifying features of aleatory contracts in the civil law of Ukraine. It is determined that the risky nature of aleatory contracts is due to the presence in the specified contracts of the so-called anomalous conditions for achieving a legal result or the basis for a risky obligation caused by the action of a case. It is found that an aleatory contract, as a type of a risk contract, is an agreement in which the counter-grant is manifested in the possibility of acquiring a property benefit depending on a circumstance that is not subject to the will of the parties. All author’s positions generally reflect the main feature of such contracts – their dependence on the emergence or termination of the rights and obligations of the parties, associated with the occurrence of an event, the presence or absence of which is unknown. Aleatory risk is a type of risk in civil law and therefore the general characteristics of risk apply to aleatory risk. The study of aleatory contracts allows us to distinguish them into a separate independent variety in the system of civil law contracts on the basis of their inherent qualities. Unlike commutative contracts, which provide for certain, previously known actions, where the benefit received by the counterparties is the exact equivalent of another thing that each of them provides on his part or undertakes to provide to the other, the content of aleatory contracts consists of unknown, uncertain events, and therefore at the stage of their conclusion, each of the parties cannot rely on a certain equivalent, since the scope of the counterparty’s obligations is determined only at the moment of the occurrence of the condition stipulated by the contract. Aleatory contracts are conditioned by the presence of risk when concluding them, and the risk here is not simply present to one degree or another, but acquires a determining content in the contract, characterizes it. Thus, the study of aleatory contracts allows us to distinguish them into a separate, independent variety in the system of civil law contracts, based on their authoritative qualities alone. The contract is rightly considered one of the oldest legal constructs in civil law.