1 February โ decrees on the "fixed-year term" and on bonded kholops. Decree on bonded kholops. The rules of the 1586 decree on registered bonded people were extended by the 1597 decree to all bonded people, who formed a single legal category of bonded kholops. The former lifelong dependency became personal bondage until the creditor's death; after the master's death, a bonded kholop became a free person without repayment of the debt: the 1597 decree explicitly stated that the wife and children of the deceased had no claim over the bonded people and that no money was to be demanded under those bonds. In keeping with the purely personal character of bonded servitude, the master's rights over bonded kholops proved limited: he had the right to use their labor, but not the right to dispose of their persons.
The 1597 decree introduced one more innovation into the institution of bonded kholopstvo by legalizing a new way of establishing it: voluntary service in a household without any prior loan, if it lasted more than half a year, also turned a voluntary servant into a bonded kholop; the decree prescribed issuing bond contracts for such voluntary kholops even against their will, because "that person fed, shod, and clothed that voluntary kholop." The Law Code reduced this half-year term to 3 months.
Children born to such people, upon reaching the age of 15, were also required to issue service bonds for themselves, by virtue of long-standing service without a bond. When, on the one hand, bonded kholopstvo shifted from service in return for interest into, as it were, service for the very debt with no right to repay it, and on the other hand, one could fall into bonded kholopstvo without any loan at all, the old form of bond contracts lost its real meaning, though for a long time it still remained predominant.
Decree on the 5-year search for runaway peasants.