If you have contracted microcredit with abusive and disproportionate interest, we tell you how to identify if they can be considered null without having to pay them.
Today it is common to find credit institutions that offer citizens immediate, pre-granted economic loans without a prior risk study or personal solvency situation. They are requested by the interested party and are granted immediately. It is advisable to have an attorney experienced in civil law and claims to deal with these issues.
For amounts that generally range between three thousand and six thousand euros, such microcredits are usually granted without any financial filter that allows crediting the payment capacity and is generally requested by those most in financial need to make ends meet.
Revolving cards or credits, of a revolving nature where the credit limit increases or decreases depending on the use made by the consumer, generating interest on the amount available; They are also part of these quick credits, which can be involved in situations of loan shark that lead to the nullity of full right or radical nullity of the applied interests since they are considered abusive towards final consumers.
Micro credits are not illegal and can be a handy financial tool if the entities that offer them do not impose abusive conditions to take advantage of the clients’ needs who request them.
Unfortunately, it happens more than expected that many microcredits of those granted contain remunerative astronomical interest that repays the amount of the requested eternal loan. This creates a situation of insolvency greater than the initial one, which in all probability entails short-term non-compliance with the payment of monthly installments, the consequent application of default or default interest, penalties, and registration in the delinquent files.
A quick credit that contains abusive remunerative interest will not generate the obligation to pay, so the consumer must deliver only the principal amount borrowed. To find out if these interests can be declared usury and null and void, we will have to refer to the Law of July 23, 1908, on the nullity of loan shark contracts, also known as the Law of Repression of loan shark or the Law Azcárate, where it is established that:
“Any loan contract that stipulates an interest notably higher than usual for money and manifestly disproportionate to the circumstances of the case or in such conditions that it results leonine, having reasons to estimate that the borrower has accepted it due to their distressing situation, their inexperience or their limited mental faculties.
The contract in which it is assumed that a greater quantity has been received than that delivered, regardless of its entity and circumstances, will be equally null and void. The renunciation of his jurisdiction, within the population, made by the debtor in this type of contract will also be null and void.
This legislation and evasion has been interpreted by the Supreme Court and is part of our jurisprudence (STS nº 628/15 of 11/25/2015) about the nullity of the loan shark credit in revolving operations, being before a credit operation whose fixed interest was more than twice the average interest of the credits on the date of signing the contract. The credit whose interest APR (Annual Equivalent Rate) was 24.6% was considered null in the specific case.
We must bear in mind that nullity (not to be confused with nullity as the possibility of being null) is not subject to a statute of limitations and can be claimed at any time.
An effective way to check if a quick loan operation contains a higher than usual interest on money, which is disproportionate to the specific circumstances of the case; can be the consultation of the annual interest rate tables offered online by the Bank of Spain, where the active interest rates applied by credit institutions about consumer loans appear, and specifically those related to cards. Credit and revolving cards, term operations between one and five years, and loans with an APR weighted average interest rate.
In turn, the default interest applied in the event of non-payment of microcredits can also be considered abusive and null if they exceed an increase in interest by two points, taking as a reference the procedural default interest regulated in article 576 of the Law of Civil Procedure. As established by Supreme Court Judgment No. 1723/15 of 04/22/2015, a higher increase will result in the nullity of the default interest clause of the loan contract with the consumer.
- With this, any consumer who has contracted microcredit whose remunerative interest may be considered much higher than the legal interest of the money and disproportionate based on the APR, as well as the default interest applied in the non-payment of the loan installations greater than an increase of two percent, may claim the nullity of the same, being obliged only to return the initial amount requested and received.
