부동산담보신탁에서의 수익권의 성질에 대한 검토

부동산담보신탁에서 수익권의 법적 성질을 검토했다.

As real estate trusts for security purposes(hereinafter “real estate security trust”) are used as a key collateral in real estate project finance, many disputes have arisen and social costs are increasing. In order to increase the legal stability and predictability of transactions, it is necessary to further develop existing discussions about the beneficiary’s rights in real estate security trusts that have not yet been clarified. While the Supreme Court appears to have adopted the majority opinion that views beneficiary rights as personal rights, it is not appropriate to apply a single legal theory or doctrine uniformly to all kinds of trust relationships.

It is necessary to understand the nature of the beneficiary rights differently and adjust or adapt doctrines, considering the attributes of each trust contract. The nature of the beneficiary right should not be determined upon the dichotomy between doctrines of personal rights and property rights. Rather it should be examined, while understanding contractual relationship of the real estate security trust through proper interpretation of trust agreements and formulating the most appropriate legal doctrines that can fully appreciate the attributes of such trust contract.

Even if the trust system is a very flexible system, it is not possible to freely determine the contents of a trust contract indefinitely upon the agreement between the parties, and as a limitation, consistency with the existing legal system is required. Considering the absence of the equity law in the judicial system of the Republic of Korea, it is hard to resolve every trust-related issue by legislation. The nature of trust contract relationship should be investigated through formation of the court's active case law, and more limits on freedom of contract content are needed.

When forming the security trust-related legal principles, it should be considered that the beneficiary right has both personal right-like character and real property right-like character and that the real estate security trust beneficiary’s rights perform a collateral function. In particular, it has properties similar to the non-standard collateral, so-called Yangdo-dambo, so it may be possible to apply some analogy of Yangdo-dambo legal principles to those of real estate security trust. The Supreme Court en banc Decision 2014Da225809 decided on Jun.

22, 2017, was the case about the fate of beneficiary rights in real estate security trust when secured loan was transferred to a third party, following the court’s assign order. While the court treated whether separation of beneficiary’s rights and secured claims is allowed as a problem that should be determined upon individual trust contracts, this paper suggests that it is necessary to establish the limit of nature of beneficiary rights that separation of secured bonds and beneficiary rights is not allowed. Beneficiary rights, separated from secured bonds, have only a limited economic meaning and destabilize the legal status of the parties.

Although it is important to widely recognize freedom of contracts, it is desirable to force secured bonds and beneficiary rights to be traded together to avoid the uncertainty of the contractual relationship, occurrence of unintended consequences. In the Seoul High Court en banc Decision 2017Na2036022 decided on Jan. 17, 2018, the court ruled that only the beneficiary rights are transferred, and the beneficiary status, including obligations by the trustee, is not transferred. This paper criticizes the court’s approach. It is questionable how the beneficiary right and the beneficiary status can exist separately, and what will be its economic and legal outcome.

This also goes against the indivisibility of beneficiary rights.