Kinds

Civil Code Classifications of Deposit

A deposit exists when a person receives a thing belonging to another with the principal obligation of safely keeping it and returning it. Delivery is essential because deposit is a real contract, and custody alone is not enough unless safekeeping and return are the controlling obligations.

The Civil Code classifies deposit first as extrajudicial or judicial. Extrajudicial deposit is either voluntary or necessary. A deposit may also be described as gratuitous or compensated, regular or irregular in commercial usage, and ordinary or commercial, but these descriptions do not displace the statutory classification.

Voluntary Deposit

A voluntary deposit is constituted when delivery is made by the will of the depositor and accepted by the depositary for safekeeping. It may be oral or written because no special form is required for validity, although written proof may matter when enforcement or identification of the thing becomes disputed.

The essential test is the principal purpose of the delivery. If the receiver is primarily expected to keep and later return the same thing, the relation is deposit. If the receiver is primarily expected to use, consume, transport, repair, sell, lease, pledge, administer, or manage the thing, the contract is governed by that principal juridical relation, even if custody is incidentally involved.

The depositor is commonly the owner, but ownership is not indispensable to the creation of deposit. A possessor, agent, lessee, borrower, or other person with lawful control may deliver the thing for safekeeping, subject to the superior rights of the owner or of a person later adjudged entitled to it.

When the same thing is deposited by two or more persons who claim the right to its return, the depositary should not decide ownership by private preference. The safer legal position is to preserve the thing and deliver it only according to the parties' common instruction, the controlling stipulation, or a competent directive.

Capacity affects the remedies but does not erase the practical fact of custody. If a capable depositary accepts a deposit from an incapacitated depositor, the depositary remains bound to keep and return the thing. If a capable depositor delivers property to an incapacitated depositary, recovery is generally confined to the thing while still in the depositary's possession or to the value by which the incapacitated depositary was benefited.

Necessary Deposit

Necessary deposit arises where the circumstances reduce the ordinary freedom to choose the time, person, or conditions of safekeeping. It is still deposit because the receiver's central duty is preservation and return, but the source of the custody is necessity rather than a fully voluntary arrangement.

• Deposit made in compliance with a legal obligation. This exists when a law requires a person to place property in custody or to hold it for another under a legal duty. The special law creating the duty governs first, and the Civil Code rules on deposit apply to matters not covered by that special law.
• Deposit occasioned by calamity. This exists when urgent events such as fire, storm, flood, pillage, shipwreck, or similar danger compel the owner or possessor to entrust property to another for preservation. The emergency explains the delivery, but the depositary is still bound to safeguard and return the thing.
• Deposit of effects by travelers in hotels or inns. The Civil Code treats these effects as necessary deposits when the keeper or employees are notified of the effects brought by the guest and the guest observes the reasonable precautions advised for their care.

In hotel and inn deposits, liability rests on the policy that travelers must rely on the vigilance of the establishment. The keeper's responsibility may extend to effects in the hotel and its annexes, including vehicles, animals, and articles introduced or placed in areas connected with the lodging.

The keeper is generally liable for loss or damage caused by employees, servants, or strangers. Force majeure defeats liability, and robbery with arms or through irresistible force is treated as force majeure. Mere theft or robbery without those circumstances does not automatically release the keeper, because the duty includes reasonable vigilance against ordinary risks of lodging.

The keeper is not liable when the loss is due to the guest, the guest's family, servants, or visitors, or to the nature or character of the things brought. Notices or stipulations by which the establishment attempts to free itself in advance from responsibility for the guest's effects are void. The keeper may retain the guest's effects as security for lodging and supplies customarily furnished.

Judicial Deposit or Sequestration

Judicial deposit, also called sequestration, is created by court order when property is attached, seized, or otherwise placed in custody in connection with litigation. Its immediate purpose is not private convenience but preservation of property so that the court's eventual judgment can be made effective.

Unlike ordinary extrajudicial deposit, judicial deposit may cover both movable and immovable property. The custodian is the officer or person designated by the court, and the property must be kept, administered, released, sold, or delivered only as the court or governing procedural rules direct.

The duty in sequestration is fiduciary and custodial. The custodian does not become owner, may not use the property for personal benefit, and must account for fruits, accessions, proceeds, or deterioration according to the nature of the property and the court's instructions.

Extrajudicial Deposit and Its Object

Extrajudicial deposit is deposit made outside a judicial proceeding. Under the Civil Code's general rule, it may be constituted only over movable things because the ordinary undertaking is physical safekeeping and return of the same movable property.

If parties privately describe the custody of land or a building as a deposit, the label is not controlling. The relation is more likely lease, agency, administration, trust, guardianship, receivership by agreement, or another juridical relation depending on the parties' intent and the obligations assumed. True sequestration of immovables requires judicial intervention.

Gratuitous and Compensated Deposit

Deposit is presumed gratuitous. It becomes compensated when the parties stipulate payment or when the depositary is engaged in the business of storing goods. Compensation does not change the contract into lease of services if safekeeping and return of the thing remain the principal obligations.

Commercial storage is still deposit when the warehouse, storage operator, or similar custodian receives specific goods for safekeeping and return according to the contract. The compensated character may affect the expected standard of care, the allocation of charges, and the custodian's available security for lawful fees, but it does not authorize use or appropriation of the thing.

Regular, Irregular, and Bank Deposits

A regular deposit requires the return of the identical thing delivered. The depositary may not use the thing without permission, and permission to use generally changes the relation into loan or commodatum because the principal benefit shifts from safekeeping to use. The relation remains deposit only when the use is merely incidental and safekeeping remains the controlling purpose.

When fungible money or goods are delivered with authority to commingle, use, or dispose of them and return only an equivalent amount or quality, the arrangement is often called an irregular deposit in commercial language. In civil law analysis, it is ordinarily governed as a loan because ownership or practical disposal passes to the receiver and the duty is to return an equivalent, not the identical thing.

Bank deposits illustrate this distinction. Savings, current, and time deposits create a creditor-debtor relation between depositor and bank. The bank does not become a depositary of the exact bills or coins delivered; it becomes bound to pay the depositor according to the account terms and applicable banking rules.

Functional Distinctions Among the Kinds

The kinds of deposit are best understood by identifying the source of the custody, the object held, and whether the receiver must return the identical thing or merely an equivalent. Once safekeeping and return of the same thing are no longer central, the transaction may resemble deposit in name but is governed by another contract in substance.