In order to understand the meaning of the term forgiveness, it is necessary, first of all, to discover its etymological origin. In this case, we can state that it is a word that derives from Latin, exactly from the verb “condonare”, which can be translated as “to forgive a debt or sentence”.
Forgiveness is the act and result of forgiving : exempting or forgiving the payment of a debt or the fulfillment of a sentence .
For example: “In a controversial decision, the national government decreed the forgiveness of the debt of an oil company” , “The forgiveness of fines will be made to those people without pending cases with the Justice” , “The director announced the forgiveness of the punishment after the player apologized to his teammates” .
At the judicial level, debt forgiveness is a legal act carried out by a creditor renouncing his right to collect a debt and thus freeing the debtor from the corresponding payment. The forgiveness may be partial or total.
Legal experts interpret the nature of debt forgiveness in different ways. For some specialists, this legal act is unilateral : it is carried out based on a decision made by the creditor. For other experts, however, debt forgiveness is contractual since it has to be accepted by the debtor.
Suppose a country owes a multi-million dollar sum to an international lending institution . Faced with an economic and social crisis, the government of the country in question claims that it is not in a position to meet the debt payments, so it initiates negotiations with the institution. For the creditor, a partial debt forgiveness can be beneficial since the debtor is able to pay a percentage of the debt, but not the full amount. Thus, the creditor agrees to a 35% forgiveness of the debt.
There are various types of forgiveness depending on the criteria taken into consideration. Good examples of this are the following:
-According to its form, we can find express and tacit forgiveness. The first occurs when the will to remit the debt is declared, while the second occurs when this intention is deduced from a series of unequivocal acts of the creditor.
-Depending on the object of the obligation, the forgiveness may be total or partial. The first, the total, is the one that occurs when the obligation is completely and integrally extinguished, with the consequences that this brings with it. The second, the partial, is the one that takes place when the forgiveness only refers to a specific amount within the total or when it focuses on what are the accessory obligations.
In addition to all of the above, it should be noted that the main purpose of forgiveness is none other than to ensure that an obligation can be fulfilled to a greater or lesser extent.