Template:No assignment capsule

The old chestnut from laws 201, is that you cannot unilaterally transfer obligations under a contract in any case; only rights. Transferring rights and obligations is a novation. Everyone has to agree to that. Transfer of rights only — “assignment” is reasonably innocuous in any contract, even a finance contract, though that doesn’t stop banking legal eagles getting agitated about it — possibly out of a misfounded suspicion it might upset close-out netting arrangements. In our rambunctious opinion, it does not and cannot: nemo dat quod non habet. In any case nervousness about whom you can take the benefit of your rights or perform your obligations for you is a lot more of a “thing” in a lending situation, where the action itself — paying or receiving money — isn’t one that requires any skill, competence of personality in itself. (Sorry, banker friends, but it is true).

Now, unlike the performance of personal services, discharging a payment obligation is, of itself, a non-personal thing: I don’t care who pays the million quid you owe me as long as someone does. But if I have invited Pink Floyd to play at my son’s Barmitzvah I will care, a lot, if they send some other jokers along instead.

The thing about money payments isn’t who pays the money, but whether they pay it. But who actually pays the money — as often as not it will be a direct wire from your bank on your behalf, after all — is a very different thing from who is obliged to pay it, and, especially six months out from a coupon payment in a choppy credit environment, this is a personal thing, so boilerplatey legal eagles like to make that clear. With personal services it goes without saying. It is not possible for someone who is not Pink Floyd to perform the obligation of being Pink Floyd.