Part I in a Series about the Statute of Frauds

Let’s shake on it!!  While you may feel pride and it may give you warm fuzzies to feel like your handshake is your bond and to believe that the other party to your contract completely trusts you, you may not feel this way once the contract goes south, the parties ultimately have a different understanding of the terms of the contract or one of the parties fails to actually perform his obligations under the contract.

The most important reason to put a contract in writing is so that both parties to the contract can look at the specific terms and say, “Yes, this is what I understand the agreement between us to be.”  Think how many times you have said something to your spouse, the person who knows you better than anyone, only to find that their interpretation of what you just said was completely different from what you intended.

When contracts are not in writing, parties often find, and often times too late, that they were not of the same mind set when it came to the actual terms of an oral agreement.  There are numerous other reasons that contracts should be in writing — you can guess a few of them — however, this article covers agreements that MUST be in writing in order to be enforceable in court.

This requirement for a written contract is referred to as the “Statute of Frauds.”

Continue reading “Does My Contract Need To Be in Writing?” »