Section Third: Effects of Contracts

Article 221

Article 221 - Agreements regularly formed bind those who have been parties thereto. They must be understood, interpreted and executed in accordance with good faith, equity and usage.

Article 222

Article 222 - The conventions extend to the universal successors of the parties in whose favor or against whom they produce their effects, either immediately (creditors) or after the death of the contracting parties or one of them (heirs, universal legatees, or universal legatees).

Article 223

Article 223 - The contracting parties are not necessarily the individuals who appeared prominently on the deed and gave their signature: it is possible that these latter individuals acted as agents or business managers. In such a case, the act produces its effects not in the person of the representative, but in that of the represented party, which becomes creditor or debtor, excluding the agent or business manager.

Article 224

Article 224 - However, it is different in the case where the agent has acted apparently on his own behalf, as a straw man and without revealing the mandate under which he is acting: the persons with whom he deals in these circumstances have no action against anyone other than him and can only be sued by him. It is only in the relations between the representative and his principal that the rules of agency and representation will apply.

Article 225

Article 225 - In principle, contracts do not have any effect with respect to third parties, in the sense that they cannot confer rights on them or make them debtors; they have a relative value, limited to the parties and their universal successors.

Article 226

Article 226 - This rule does not provide for any exception in the passive sense: a promise on behalf of another binds the author if they played the role of guarantor and committed to obtaining the third party's consent; however, that party retains full freedom to grant or refuse ratification (Article 193). The refusal to ratify does not in any way engage the liability of the third party, but it makes the guarantor liable for damages at the expense of the non-performance of what they had undertaken, explicitly or implicitly. Ratification has retroactive effects as between the parties from the date of the contract; vis-à-vis third parties, it is effective only from the day it is given.

Article 227

Article 227 - The relativity of contracts allows for exceptions from the active point of view: it is permitted to stipulate in one's own name, to the benefit of a third person, so that such person becomes a creditor of the promisor and in accordance with the contract itself. The stipulation for another may thus intervene validly: 1 - When it is linked to an agreement concluded by the stipulant in their own pecuniary or moral interest; 2 - When it constitutes the condition or burden of a beneficence, whether inter vivos or testamentary, that the same stipulant grants to another person (beneficence sub modo).

Article 228

Article 228 - A stipulation for the benefit of another may occur in favor of future persons or also in favor of currently undetermined persons, provided they are determinable at the time when the operation is to produce its effects.

Article 229

Article 229 - This provision must only comply with the rules of form required for the validity of the operation in which it is framed: it is therefore not subject to the forms of inter vivos donation, even if it would consist, for the beneficiary third party, in a pure liberality.

Article 230

Article 230 - The third-party beneficiary of such a provision becomes immediately and directly creditor of the promisor.

Article 231

Article 231 - The person making the stipulation has the faculty to revoke it for another as long as the third-party beneficiary does not accept it, explicitly or implicitly. The revocation can be either explicit or implicit; however, its exercise belongs only to the person making the stipulation themselves, excluding their creditors and heirs. This revocation does not necessarily release the debtor, who remains bound unless there is a contrary agreement or legal impossibility, vis-à-vis the person making the stipulation, who applies it to themselves and applies the benefit of an operation arranged in the interest of a third party (life insurance for someone else's benefit).