Fiducia cum creditore: Risk management and double ownership

Abstract

Credit risk represents one of the many problems that the legal profession is called upon to solve. It has been so from ancient times and the instruments used to deal with it then are applied even today. One of them, experiencing a renaissance in the last 20 years, is fiducia cum creditore. It has been introduced into Croatian law in 1996, followed by discussions about the nature of ownership transfer it is founded on. In an effort to provide a historical basis for further argument, the author investigated the patrimonial positions of creditor and debtor in Roman law fiducia cum creditore. In these considerations, emphasis is put on the parties interests and the internal element of risk, especially elaborated in the matter of furtum fiduciae.