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fashion that with respect to movables, to be effective as to
third parties, the agreement must be filed in the parish or
parishes where the spouses are domiciled. The most sensible
reading of this article is that third parties are not
required to research the records of all 64 parishes, but
rather are entitled to rely on what is or is not filed for
registry in the records of the parish where the spouses are
domiciled.
However, respondent overlooks the burdens that respondent’s
rule might impose on spouses who move. Would respondent’s rule
require that a refiling be accomplished before or on the date of
domicile change, or would there be a standard grace period after
the domicile change? Who is better able to negotiate their
respective burdens, third parties who look to assets to satisfy
existing debts or to assure payments of prospective advances of
funds or credit, or spouses who may not be represented by counsel
and may be surprised to learn that a filing they had thought was
good-until-revoked-or-modified, had in fact been rendered
ineffective. In this regard, the same increase in mobility that
creates the danger of imposing more burdens on third persons also
creates the danger of removing more protections from
unsophisticated spouses.
We do not mean to make light of the concerns respondent
describes. We suggest that the weighing of these and contrary
concerns are properly within the province of Louisiana’s
lawmaking structure. We decline to go further than what the
statute in terms prescribes. We conclude that, under art. 2332,
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