THE BANKRUPTCY ADJUDICATION AND ITS MULTIDIMENSIONAL EFFECTS: IMPACTS ON THE BANKRUPT’S PERSON, OBLIGATIONS, CONTRACTS AND THE CROSS-BORDER DIMENSION OF INSOLVENCY

Abstract

This article examines the legal effects of the judicial decision that adjudicates bankruptcy, understood not as a mere procedural closing act, but as a constitutive-determinative judicial provision that inaugurates the collective execution regime. Drawing on specialized doctrine, the governing legislation and the case law of the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice (STJ), the study analyses four planes on which bankruptcy operates: its effects on the bankrupt debtor’s person, particularly dispossession and the fresh start doctrine consolidated by Law 14,112/2020; its effects on obligations, with emphasis on the early maturity of debts and the par conditio creditorum principle; its effects on bilateral contracts, whose fate is entrusted to the reasoned discretion of the judicial administrator; and, finally, the cross-border dimension of insolvency introduced by Chapter VI-A of Law 11,101/2005, based on the UNCITRAL Model Law. The article concludes that the 2020 legislative reform shifted the centre of gravity of the Brazilian bankruptcy system from punitive stigma toward economic efficiency and the swift reintegration of the entrepreneur into the market, without prejudice to gaps that remain to be addressed, such as the realisation of digital assets and the interface between the bankruptcy court and tax enforcement proceedings.