Among the procedural issues related to the enforcement of court decisions in civil cases and decisions of other authorities (officials), Chapter VI of the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine (CPC) regulates, in Article 432, the conditions and grounds for correcting errors in enforcement documents and recognizing such documents as unenforceable. An analysis of judicial practice regarding the application of Part 2 of Article 432 of the CPC of Ukraine (recognition of an enforcement document as unenforceable) has led the author to question the universality of this procedural norm in the context of its practical application. The author notes that this provision has been interpreted by the Supreme Court solely in relation to obligatory (contractual) legal relations, as the grounds for termination of civil obligations—although indicated as being «in particular,» implying a non-exhaustive list – are limited to the norms found in Chapter 50, Section I, Book Five of the Civil Code of Ukraine. The absence of references to proprietary (real) legal relations in the Supreme Court’s interpretation has resulted in court rulings that directly contradict the Court’s legal positions, specifically regarding the application of the institutions of the law of obligations to real legal relations. At the same time, courts apply a discretionary interpretation of the concept of «voluntary performance» of an obligation by the debtor, recognizing as voluntary only that performance which occurs prior to the initiation of enforcement proceedings. The analysis revealed that the structure involving the indication of grounds for the termination of civil obligations – including the conceptual division of the grounds for recognizing an enforcement document as unenforceable into substantive and procedural legal categories – was originally formulated in relation to Part 4 of Article 369 of the CPC of Ukraine (as amended by Law No. 1618-IV). Despite the apparent similarity between the wording of Part 4 of Article 369 (Law No. 1618-IV) and Part 2 of Article 432 of the CPC of Ukraine (as amended by Law No. 2147-VIII), a linguistic interpretation of these provisions leads to the conclusion that «termination» and «voluntary performance» of an obligation by the debtor or another person constitute two distinct and independent grounds for recognizing an enforcement document as unenforceable. The analysis concludes that, in the absence of a legal position of the Supreme Court, the existing judicial practice refutes the universal nature of the provision in Part 2 of Article 432 of the CPC of Ukraine. Moreover, under Part 2 of Article 389 of the CPC of Ukraine, such judicial practice is not subject to cassation review.
V. O. Bugaytsev (Mon,) studied this question.