LOAN FOR USE. - It is a contract by which one of the contracting parties (the lender) delivers to the other (the borrower) a movable or immovable thing, so that the latter may use it for a determined time or for a determined use, with the obligation to return the same thing received (art. 1803 of the Civil Code). It is an essentially gratuitous contract; if a compensation were stipulated, there would be no loan for use but a lease; it is a contract with unilateral obligations; it is a real contract, which does not exist until the object has been delivered.
It is distinguished from the mutuum, which is not essentially gratuitous, since it may also be onerous (interest-bearing mutuum), cannot have as its object any thing whatsoever, but only a quantity of money or of other fungible things, and entails the obligation to return not the same things received, but the same quantity, kind, and quality; it is likewise distinguished from deposit, which is directed to the custody of the thing, whereas the loan for use is as a rule directed to procuring for the borrower the utility that the use of the thing can give.
The obligations of the contracting parties are laid down by the Italian Civil Code and are also binding in conscience, according to the general principle that pervades the whole moral treatise de iustitia et iure: the civil laws, which regulate the juridical relations among various persons, have an ethical value and therefore bind in conscience, if they are not contrary to divine law.
The principal obligations of the borrower are: to guard and preserve the thing with the diligence of a good father of a family (the borrower is answerable even for the fortuitous perishing of the thing in certain cases: arts. 1850, 1866); to use the thing only for the use determined by the contract or by the nature of the thing itself; not to grant to others the enjoyment of it without the consent of the lender (art. 1804). The restitution of the thing must be made either at the agreed term or time, or at the end of the use, or, in certain cases, even upon the simple request of the lender (arts. 1809-11).
The principal obligations of the lender are: if the borrower has had to bear extraordinary and urgent expenses for the preservation of the thing, the lender must reimburse him (art. 1808); if the thing has defects, the lender is bound to compensate the borrower for the damage that has resulted to him therefrom (for example, the brakes of the bicycle were faulty and the borrower was injured); note, however, that the obligation exists only when the lender knew of the defect and did not mention it to the borrower (art. 1812).
In canon law, as regards ecclesiastical goods, the norms established by the civil law in the respective countries apply to the loan for use (v. BENI ECCLESIASTICI; CANONIZZAZIONE DELLE LEGGI CIVILI; CONTRATTO); only it is forbidden (and perhaps under penalty of nullity of the contract, notwithstanding can. 11) to give sacred things in loan for use, for uses not consonant with their character (can. 1537, which is an application of the general principle enunciated in can. 1150). Moreover, the obligation to observe the same formalities prescribed for the alienation of ecclesiastical goods also applies to the loan for use, when the contract, although not being a true alienation, can produce a patrimonial damage to the ecclesiastical body to which the thing belongs.