Open Decision Ledger · Civil obligations & remedies
Automatic rescission of a sale by an agreed lapse of the balance due date
Supreme Court, Dec. 24, 2020, 2018Da256023 (judgment)
No holding summary · checked against points at issue. The official text publishes no summary of the holding for this decision. The quotation and factors in this record are copied verbatim from the points at issue; the evidence for each axis is taken from the points at issue, the order and the reasons.
Case name: 지분소유권이전등기청구의소
Official text on the National Law Information Center
Question
Where a real estate sale contract provides that it is automatically rescinded if the buyer fails to pay the balance by the due date, does the lapse of the due date alone end the contract, and if not, when does it do so?
Holding
In principle, no. Lapse of the due date alone does not make the contract automatically rescinded unless the seller tendered performance and so put the buyer in default, unless the parties specially agreed that the lapse of the due date alone would make the contract ineffective without asking whether the seller had ready the documents needed for transfer, or unless the buyer, after repeated defaults, asked for an extension, undertook to perform by the new date and consented to automatic rescission if it failed to do so. On the facts found, the plaintiff's agreement of 21 October 2015 carried that consent, so the first sale contract was automatically ineffective when the balance was still unpaid on 2 November 2015.
Points at issue, verbatim
지급기일의 도과 사실만으로 매매계약이 자동 해제된 것으로 볼 수 있는지 여부(원칙적 소극) 및 지급기일의 도과 사실만으로 매매계약이 자동 해제된 것으로 볼 수 있는 경우
Unofficial English translation
Whether the sale contract may be regarded as having been automatically rescinded merely by reason of the passage of the due date for payment (in principle, negative), and the cases in which the sale contract may be regarded as having been automatically rescinded merely by reason of the passage of the due date for payment
Disposition
Reversed and remanded Stated in the decision
원심판결을 파기하고, 사건을 제주지방법원에 환송한다.
Unofficial English translation
The judgment of the court below is reversed, and the case is remanded to the Jeju District Court.
Form of the test
Elements stated Read from the decision
매도인이 이행의 제공을 하여 매수인을 이행지체에 빠뜨리지 않는 한 지급기일의 도과 사실만으로는 매매계약이 자동 해제된 것으로 볼 수 없는 것이나
Unofficial English translation
Unless the seller tenders performance and thereby places the buyer in default in performance, the sale contract cannot be regarded as having been automatically rescinded merely by reason of the passage of the due date for payment,
Factors
- 매수인이 잔대금 지급기일까지 대금을 지급하지 못하면 계약이 자동적으로 해제된다는 취지의 약정을 한 경우
- 지급기일의 도과 사실만으로 매매계약이 자동 해제된 것으로 볼 수 있는지 여부(원칙적 소극)
- 지급기일의 도과 사실만으로 매매계약이 자동 해제된 것으로 볼 수 있는 경우
Unofficial English translation
• Where the parties have agreed that the contract shall automatically be rescinded if the buyer fails to pay the balance by the due date for payment
• Whether the sale contract may be regarded as having been automatically rescinded merely by reason of the passage of the due date for payment (in principle, negative)
• The cases in which the sale contract may be regarded as having been automatically rescinded merely by reason of the passage of the due date for payment
Relation to precedent
Follows earlier decisions Stated in the decision
대법원 1992. 10. 27. 선고 91다32022 판결(공1992, 3240)
Unofficial English translation
Supreme Court Decision 91Da32022 decided October 27, 1992 (Gong 1992, 3240)
Decisions referred to
대법원 1992. 10. 27. 선고 91다32022 판결(공1992, 3240), 대법원 1996. 3. 8. 선고 95다55467 판결(공1996상, 1223), 대법원 2010. 7. 22. 선고 2010다1456 판결
Burden of proof
Not addressed Not in the decision
Open question and revisit condition
If the buyer pays part of the balance by the extended date, does the same agreement still make the contract automatically ineffective when the rest is unpaid?
The remand judgment's findings on what the parties intended when they made the agreement of 21 October 2015 will show how the two special circumstances are weighed in practice. A later decision altering the rule on automatic rescission by agreement, or a change to Article 544 of the Civil Act relied on in this decision, would require this entry to be read again.
Cross-family AI independent reading & axis check
7 of 8 axes matched GPT-6 Astra (OpenAI, codex CLI) · 2026-10-26
A reader from another model family (GPT-6 Astra), given the official text but not the primary reading, agreed on 7 of the 8 axes; the readings differed on axis 8 (open question and revisit condition).
Axis 8 (Open question and revisit condition): Primary “If the buyer pays part of the balance by the extended date, does the same agreement still make the contract automatically ineffective when the rest is unpaid?” vs Independent “What liability, if any, remains under the defendants' undertaking to assume the sellers' obligations after the sale automatically terminated?”
The primary reading asks about partial payment by the extended date while the independent reading asks about remaining liability under the assumption of obligations after termination.
지급기일의 도과 사실만으로 매매계약이 자동 해제된 것으로 볼 수 있는지 여부(원칙적 소극) 및 지급기일의 도과 사실만으로 매매계약이 자동 해제된 것으로 볼 수 있는 경우Raw responses and comparison record: Protocol · Blind readings (JSONL) · Axis comparison (JSONL) · SHA-256 (JSON)
Lower-court contrast & scope of application
Lower-court reading vs. Supreme Court holding
Lower-court context: The Jeju District Court, in its judgment of 20 June 2018 (2017Na11049), held that the sellers' obligation to transfer one third each of the two properties under the first sale contract had become impossible to perform through their own fault, and that the plaintiff's application of 14 November 2016 to amend the statement of claim and its cause amounted to a notice rescinding that contract, which therefore was lawfully rescinded, so the sellers owed restitution and damages.
Supreme Court standard: The Supreme Court held that the plaintiff had never pleaded the exercise of a right of rescission or a claim for restitution founded on it up to the close of oral argument, and that damages for default and restitution on rescission are separate claims; deciding that the contract had been rescinded was therefore unlawful under Article 203 of the Civil Procedure Act, which protects the parties' control over the subject of judgment and the principle of debate. On the second issue it held that the court below had misread the law on construing the agreement and on rescission by rejecting the defendants' plea of automatic invalidation, since the forfeiture of KRW 200 million in contract money and KRW 300 million nominally described as an interim payment made payment of the balance the decisive factor, and the plaintiff had consented to automatic invalidation.
Distinguishing conditions
- A case in which the seller did not tender performance, did not put the buyer in default, and the parties made no special agreement that the lapse of the due date alone would make the contract ineffective.
- A contract that provides instead that either party's default allows the other party to rescind and claim damages, with the contract money serving as the measure of damages, as the first sale contract of 28 August 2015 did here.
- A case in which the buyer did not request an extension after repeated defaults, or promised to perform by the new date but did not agree that failure would automatically rescind the contract.
Record verification notes
First check what the plaintiff actually pleaded and when: damages for default and restitution founded on rescission are separate claims, and the court below decided one it was not asked to decide. Then set the text and formation of the agreement, the forfeiture of the contract money and interim payment, and the parties' conduct after the extended date against the two special circumstances the Court named, since the automatic invalidation turned on reading them together.
From the official text
Points at issue
부동산 매매계약에서 매수인이 잔대금 지급기일까지 대금을 지급하지 못하면 계약이 자동적으로 해제된다는 취지의 약정을 한 경우, 지급기일의 도과 사실만으로 매매계약이 자동 해제된 것으로 볼 수 있는지 여부(원칙적 소극) 및 지급기일의 도과 사실만으로 매매계약이 자동 해제된 것으로 볼 수 있는 경우
Unofficial English translation
In a real estate sale contract, where the parties have agreed that the contract shall automatically be rescinded if the buyer fails to pay the balance by the due date for payment, whether the sale contract may be regarded as having been automatically rescinded merely by reason of the passage of the due date for payment (in principle, negative), and the cases in which the sale contract may be regarded as having been automatically rescinded merely by reason of the passage of the due date for payment
Summary of the holding
The official text publishes no summary of the holding for this decision. The quotation and factors in this record are copied verbatim from the points at issue; the evidence for each axis is taken from the points at issue, the order and the reasons.
Order
원심판결을 파기하고, 사건을 제주지방법원에 환송한다.
Unofficial English translation
The judgment of the court below is reversed, and the case is remanded to the Jeju District Court.
Provisions referred to
민법 제544조
Read 2026-10-26 · Cross-read 2026-10-26. All quotes matched against the official text. The Chinese-character placeholders the court used for anonymised parties are given in their Korean readings, and parenthetical Chinese-character glosses are omitted.
Every entry is published only after all quotes have been matched character by character against the official text, and audited by an independent second reading from a different model family across all eight axes. Both agreed axes and text-grounded interpretive divergences are recorded openly. The ledger is a research record, not an assessment of the court or advice on any matter.
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