The fact that debt financing must be usually paid interest on, can represent a vicious circle, if despite regular payment the debts cannot be reduced. Into earlier times continuous debtor came in this way in debt farmhand shank, body characteristic or slavery.
In some countries are debts hereditary, so that whole families are held over several generations away in body characteristic and/or slavery
Kinds of debt in public households - With respect to the public account system one differentiates among other things between rentierlichen debts, to whose demolition relevant special incomes from fees, contributions, subsidies or rents stand for order, and unrentierlichen debts, which must be served from general budgetary appropriations. This distinction is to that extent of importance, when a high rentierliche indebtedness hardly limits the capacity to act of a house owner, a high unrentierliche indebtedness however very probably.
Of insolvency one speaks, if the debts of the applicant for the credit exceed its sellable fortune and/or seizable income. With a natural person an insolvency is given, if liabilities with the Veräußerungs-Erlös of its enforcement-legally usable fortune (enforcement) and the seizable amounts wage and/or Gehaltspfändung of the next six years cannot be fulfilled presumably.
Debt is the sum of the commitments is called, which a person meets. The jurisprudence regards against it in particular in private law the individual commitment (see debt (private law)). Debtor can be a private person just like a private business or the state (national debt). The regular repayment of the open debts is called debt service.