Abstract
The amendment to the Civil Code made by Act No. 192/2021 Coll., effective from 1 July 2021 excluded a minor under the age of fifteen to validly undertake to pay a contractual penalty. The same applies to fines provided by law for breach of the obligation.
In practice, such child's debt often takes the form of a surcharge on the fare for breach of the obligation to pay the fare. The motive of the amendment is to strengthen the protection of minors and to respond to the fact that the regulation of contractual penalty and fines is now based on an absolute objective principle.
The monetary contractual penalty and the fines, as well as the fulfilment of any other monetary debt arising from a legal act of a minor who has not acquired full legal capacity, can now be enforced only from the statutorily defined range of assets, i.e. only from assets acquired by the minor as a child or from assets acquired with funds obtained in childhood (Article 899a of the Civil Code, respectively Article 262c of the Civil Procedure Code). The children's debts resulting from the contractual penalty or fines incurred before the amendment came into force are assessed according to the existing legislation.