Optional and alternative obligations in the Russian law and foreign legislations: comparative legal study

The article is devoted to a complex study of the civil legal constructions of the optional and the alternative obligations. The construction of the optional obligation is popular in modern civil turnover because the debtor has the right to escape from the obligations by providing a substitution to the creditor, this significantly decreasing the risk for the debtor’s liability for the non-fulfillment or improper fulfillment of the obligation. The mentioned circumstances prove the timeliness of the optional obligation research. The analysis of the wide court practice shows that there is no unified approach to considering a dispute associated with the alternative obligations, and this is mostly explained by the incorrect understanding of the optional and alternative obligation essence. The absence of the complex regulation of the optional and alternative obligations if the Russian civil legislation is mostly based on a weak theoretical development of the mentioned obligations. The author comes to the conclusion that an optional obligation is an independent civil and legal category. In connection with that, it is necessary to fix the legal definition of the optional obligation and its legal status in the Russian Federation civil legislation.