Ley 26-1997

(H.B. 888)

(No. 26) (Approved June 30, 1997) AN ACT To amend Section 10-102 of Act No. 208 of August 17, 1995, as amended, known as the "Negotiable Instruments and Banking Transactions Act"; amendSection 20 of Act No. 241 of September 19, 1996, as amended, known as the "Commercial Transactions Act", and the English version of this provision, in order to postpone the effective date of bothActs, to make technical amendments. STATEMENT OF MOTIVES Act No. 1 of January 16, 1997, amended Act No. 208 of August 17, 1995, as amended, known as the "Negotiable Instruments and Banking TransactionsAct". Pursuant to Act No. 208, as it has subsequently been amended, the latter would have taken effect on July 1, 1997. However, it is necessary to postpone said Act until January 1, 1998, so that itmay be more adequately implemented. Subchapter 3 of Chapter 9 of Act No. 208 requires that a statement of financing be filed in order to perfect several chattel liens. Among the formal requirements ofthe statement of financing we find that it must be signed by the debtor and the creditor and that their signatures must be authenticated by a notary public. We must point out that none of thefifty-three jurisdictions (the 50 States, Guam, the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia) that have adopted the Uniform Commerce Code ("UCC") have required that the statements of financing benotarized. This requirement substantially sets us aside from the intention of a uniform system of commercial laws. One of the cornerstones of our new

Commercial Transactions Act is: first to file, first inlaw. To this day it has not been possible to precisely determine the effect of or the need for the requirement of notarizing commercial transactions. We believe that one of the possible effects ofthis requirement would be that of delaying commercial transactions by requiring the presence of a notary public in every transaction which requires a statement of financing to perfect the chattel...