Loan documents of illiterate people in Vietnam

Specifically, in the Judgment No. 06/2018/DS-PT dated January 16, 2018 on the dispute over the property loan civil contract, the summary content is as follows:

“From 2002 to 2014, Ms. Th testified that Mr. K'H borrowed money from her many times (she can't remember each time) and bought fertilizers, pesticides, and groceries owed to her by Mr. K'H. her amount was 157,500,000 VND. On August 26, 2014, she and Mr. K'H closed the debt and wrote a promissory note with the content that Mr. K'H still owed her the amount of VND 157,500,000. On January 22, 2016, Mr. K'H paid her 35,000,000 VND, the balance was 122,500,000 VND. Now, she asked Mr. and Mrs. K'H to pay the outstanding amount of VND 122,500,000, without asking for interest.

And Mr. K'H said that he no longer owes Mrs. Th, so he did not agree with her petition to sue. According to the promissory note dated August 26, 2014, that Ms. Th sued, it is not his signature because he is illiterate.

The People's Court of Lam Dong province has decided not to accept the entire petition of plaintiff Ms. Nguyen Thi Th.

According to the court that has verified Mr. K'H's case and has the following pieces of evidence:

- Ms. Nguyen Thi Yen, head of village 4, LN commune, BL district, said Mr. K'H, and Mrs. Ka M currently residing in hamlet 4, LN commune, BL district are illiterate, can't write, can't read, can't sign signatures, can't write his own name.

- The judicial officer in charge of marriage registration of the LN Commune People's Committee said that Mr. and Mrs. K'H and Ms. Ka M had registered their marriage at the LN Commune People's Committee on October 30, 2001, but because they were illiterate, I don't sign it, I just point it in the marriage registration book

Therefore, the court has enough grounds to determine that Mr. K'H is illiterate, cannot write, cannot read, cannot sign his signature, and cannot write his name, so it is necessary to protect the rights of people. illiterate Mr. K'H.

From a written perspective, we can see that there are some regulations in the direction of protecting illiterate people for transactions expressed in writing.

In the Civil Code of Vietnam, we have the above provisions. That is Clause 3, Article 630, Clause 2, Article 636 of the Civil Code 2015 whereby “The will of a person with physical limitations or of an illiterate person must be made in writing by a witness and notarized or authenticated.” and "Where the testator is not able to read or hear the will or not able to sign or fingerprint it, there must be a witness who must acknowledge the will by signing it before a notary public officer or a member of the people's committee of the commune who has the authority to certify it. The notary public officer shall notarize the will, or the member of the people's committee of the commune who has the authority to certify the will shall certify it, in the presence of the testator and the witnesses."

In the Law on Notarization 2014 of Vietnam, there is also a provision in Clause 2, Article 47 that:  “In case the notarization requester cannot read, cannot hear, cannot sign, points can only be scored or in other cases prescribed by law the notarization must have witnesses.”

The above provisions are clearly made to protect the illiterate but have a very narrow scope because they only apply to wills and notarized documents, so there will be many cases where they cannot be applied to contracts that are not valid. However, the above regulations have shown that it is necessary to protect the illiterate.

According to the above case, we see that the courts are inclined to protect the illiterate when they enter into a transaction that is expressed in writing. The court was interested in determining whether Mr. K'H was literate or not, which was the crux of the matter. After determining it, it was possible to give a solution. Because that way we can know whether they understand what is stated in the document or not, or whether the civil transaction is fraudulent or forged.

After it was determined that Mr. K'H was really illiterate with convincing pieces of evidence (testimony of the village head and marriage certificate) showing that the property loan contract was indeed problematic when signed by Mr. K'H. The court considered all the pieces of evidence to show that the above transaction was not real, on the basis of protecting the illiterate people, and decided not to accept Ms. TH's petition.

The above is a judgment on the practice of adjudicating the illiterate, although there are very few illiterate people in the present time, it is thought that a specific guide is needed to ensure the rights when participating in civil transactions for these subjects.

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