Contract

1. A Contract is a very popular term. From it springs the very essence of what law is to many people.....court rooms and juicy legal battles!
2. A Contract is the legal description of an agreement. It is entered into between 2 or more persons. There are certain rules applying before an agreement qualifies as a Contract in the legal sense.
3. One of these rules seek to separate what is  intended to be binding from that not intended to be so. The ingredient that so separates is called "consideration". In very basic terms, a contract that has "value" coming from the parties would be said to have "consideration" present and is not made for free. For example, if Mr. A promises to pay Mr. B 100 dollars but Mr. B does not in turn promise Mr. A to do something for that 100 dollars, it is said that there is no "value" coming from Mr. B to bind Mr. A to his promise. In this instance, there is no contract formed between Mr. A and Mr. B. There are further refinements to this rule and I hope to discuss them in later postings.
4. In addition to separating agreements not intended to be binding, another rule surrounding the formation of Contracts is that it can be verbal and not necessarily always in writing.
5. There are other related issues surrounding a Contract, for example the capacity of a person to be a party to a Contract, limitation of actions from breaches of Contract and the formation of rights and the creation of obligations. These areas warrant separate elaboration and would be better explained in a separate posting of its own.

 I wish you a Bite Size goodbye until the next posting.