News

Sometimes it is said that loans tend to be more durable than marriages. In the case of divorce or separation, the question arises how to settle joint financial obligations, and in particular who (and how!) should pay the loan after divorce.

Taking over a house by one spouse does not mean that only he/she will be automatically obliged to repay the indebtedness to the bank.
Most often, the parties to a loan agreement are both spouses who are jointly and severally liable towards the bank. The agreement regarding the method of repayment of the loan, concluded only between the spouses, will not be effective against the bank.

One of the solutions may be taking over the entire debt by one of the former partners. However, this involves the need to obtain the bank’s consent.

From a legal point of view, it is also possible to join a contract by a family member or a new partner.

Nevertheless, it should be remembered that each of the solutions indicated is most often associated with the re-running of the loan granting procedure and the examination of creditworthiness.

According to recent press reports, the government abandoned the idea of ​​introducing the so-called “Entrepreneur Test”, the aim of which was to limit the number of natural persons who settle according to the flat tax of 19%.
New regulations could be particularly important for the IT industry and creative industries, where self-employment is often used by highly qualified specialists.
Our team is patiently waiting for the situation to unfold.

However, regardless of the above mentioned regulation, self-employed persons already have (based on provisions of labour law) the right to claim establishment of an employment relationship before the court of law.
As stipulated in art. 22 § 1² of the Labour Code ,,Employment contracts cannot be replaced with a civil law contract where the conditions of the performance of work (…) remain intact”.

This means that a formally self-employed person may, in the course of a lawsuit, lead to the court deciding that in the eyes of the law, he/she had possessed (or possesses) the status of an employee.
Such a verdict may be beneficial – in particular regarding the possibility of determining excess payment of social security contributions or obtaining remuneration for overtime work.

On 4th April 2019 Parliament approved its position on revised rules for posting of drivers, drivers’ rest times and better enforcement of cabotage rules.

Parliament wants to prevent “systematic cabotage”, by establishing a “cooling-off period” for vehicles to be spent in the home-country (60 hours) before heading for another cabotage.

Some of new regulations are focused on drivers and working time.
Companies will have to organise their timetables so that drivers are able to return home at regular intervals (at least every 4 weeks). The mandatory rest period at the end of the week should not be taken in the truck cab.

Planned rules shall apply to cabotage, and cross-border transport operations, excluding transit, bilateral operations and bilateral operations with one extra loading or unloading in each direction (or zero on the way out and two on return).

It should be noted that the results of voting in the European Parliament can clearly indicate that the opposition has been broken.

Planned changes can significantly affect the organization of work for Polish hauliers, but also Bulgarian, Romanian and hauliers from the Baltic countries.

Our team will closely follow the legislative work on this regulation.

[Source: European Parliment (press room)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en]