Do section titles in a contract have to end in a period? While reading through contracts, every time I think to check, all the section titles end with a period. Example: 1 Some Random Section. (Section's text goes here) Is this just the standard formatting style, or is there any legal requirement for it? Is there a guide online that lists the standard contract formatting style conventions?
No, section titles do not have to end in a period. But a common convention in the U.S. is that when section titles are used, they appear in bold and are followed by an unbolded period. For example: Development Credit. The Client shall acknowledge the Developer as the Website developer on the Website page entitled ... The convention promotes clarity and helps courts that later have to interpret the document to better understand the parties' intent. For a written contract, an alternative would be to place the title on its own line with the text below. Some contracts omit section titles entirely. Others add them but with an additional section explaining that the titles are not to be used to interpret section text groupings. Online resources like Law Insider and Onecle have large databases of sample contracts that should help with both formatting and content. If you'd like to learn contract drafting and revising somewhat more formally, then a good text reference is Tina L. Stark, Drafting Contracts: How and Why Lawyers Do What They Do (Wolters Kluwer 2d ed 2014). (The above snippet is from Stark.) united-states
Contracts are a relationship between two or more people Just as it is meaningless to speak of marrying yourself, it is equally meaningless to speak of a contract with yourself. Even if you were to draft such a thing, you would not have standing to sue because you can’t sue yourself. Your example probably isn’t a “one person contract” It’s a contract between the car owner (person 1) and the car yard (person 2) - probably a corporation. The fact that person 1 is representing both parties to the contract doesn’t make it a “one person contract”. There are potential conflicts of interest with this but they are not necessarily ones that can’t be overcome. However, if the car owner runs a business as a car dealer as a sole trader, then, no, they cannot make this kind of contract.
A typo in a contract does not ever void the contract. If the typo changes the meaning of the contract from what was actually intended, then it is up to a judge to interpret the contract and whether it is reasonable that a person would assume its intended meaning. In your example, it is obvious that the word "least" was meant to be there and not "lease" - as the alternate word makes no sense in context - so a judge would not void the contract or release you from your 30 day obligation (which is probably even granted to the landlord by local laws regardless of whether it was stated in the contract). Even misspellings of people's names or addresses on a lease do not void a contract if you have already paid or taken up residence. If any of these situations were brought to court, the judge would just amend the contract to a corrected version that would then serve as the contract between the two parties, replacing the version with the typo. This is known as contract reformation.
If the contract commenced on 1st October 2022 the dates 30 April 2022 and 1 July 2022 are plainly a mistake (2022 for 2023). If so, you can give notice before 30th April 2023 to terminate at the end of June. Even if you want to hold them to those dates, the current &quot;full calendar quarter&quot; (which has been tacitly renewing) will end on 31st March, and 2nd February was too late to give the required 2 months notice. Either way, the contract cannot end until 30th June 2023, the end of the next full calender quarter.
It would basically be illegal, regardless of what a contract says: contracts are subordinate to the law. So the question comes down to whether the law unequivocally requires OT for shifts longer that 8 hours. These sorts of governmental fact sheets are not absolute statements of the law, they are guidelines about what is most commonly applicable, and to determine if there are any exceptions, one must consult the actual law. The fact sheet says "After working eight hours in a day an employee must be paid time-and-a-half for the next four hours worked", which is somewhat different from "in a shift". The (summarized restatement of the) law says that an "averaging agreement" is legal (if in writing), so if that allows working more than 8 hours in a shift, that could be consistent with (does not override) the law. To really know, you have to read the actual law. The section on maximum hours and overtime says 35 (1) An employer must pay an employee overtime wages in accordance with section 40 if the employer requires, or directly or indirectly allows, the employee to work more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week. (2) Subsection (1) does not apply for the purposes of an employee who is working under an averaging agreement under section 37. So 3 shifts of 12 1/3 hours would be legal, and perhaps typical in a hospital. The "average hours" part of the law says an employer and employee may agree to average the employee's hours of work over a period of 1, 2, 3 or 4 weeks for the purpose of determining the employee's entitlement, if any, to overtime wages under subsections (4) and (6) of this section and wages payable under subsection (8) or (9) (b). as long as there is a clear advance agreement (as in a contract). This still limits hours worked without overtime to 40 hours/week (on average), and then there is still an upper limit of 12 hours: An employer under this section who requires, or directly or indirectly allows, an employee to work more than 12 hours a day, at any time during the period specified in the agreement, must pay the employee double the employee's regular wage for the time over 12 hours. Since the law is stated in terms of "day", we better see what a "day" is: "day" means (a) a 24 hour period ending at midnight, or (b) in relation to an employee's shift that continues over midnight, the 24 hour period beginning at the start of the employee's shift; so you can't force an employee to work 12 hours without overtime (without an averaging agreement), simply by splitting a 12 hour shift across midnight. It is thus possible for a contract to do things that superficially appear to be contrary to the "most common situation" factsheet representation, but the law itself is not overridden by such a contract.
So you entered a contract that was a bad deal. The law says: tough People are legally allowed to make bad deals. The law will hold you to the bad deal you made. If it only worked for good deals, no one would ever use the law because you don’t want to break a good deal. Providing it has all the required elements of a contract, it will be enforceable. Put up with him or pay him out.
Generally, what you say you will do in a contract is what you must do - there is no "the dog ate my homework" excuse. For your examples: Employment contracts have so much government regulation that the common law contract is lost in the mists of time. It is unlikely that a court would interpret an employment contract as requiring exact timekeeping; it is also unlikely that the person would have worked exactly 38 hours on every week except the one where they worked 37.5. However, if it were proved that the employee owed 0.5 hours to the employer they could be required to provide it or refund the pay they had received, barring a law that changed this. The dog must be walked. Alice must find a substitute walker if she is unable to provide it. Falling sick is something foreseeable that Alice should have provided for either in the contract ("if I am sick I won't walk the dog") or by arranging for someone else to do it. For purely personal services, falling sick may frustrate the contract, however, dog-walking is probably not personal enough. There is a doctrine which allows termination by frustration where neither party is at fault, however, it is not clear that this would apply. The building burning down is foreseeable and could (should?) have been addressed in the contract. If the destruction of the building was without fault on the owner then the contract is frustrated. If there was some fault on the owner (smoking in bed, inoperative fire alarm etc.) and the cleaner stands willing, ready and able (that is able except for the absence of a building) to perform their obligations, the owner would probably be obliged to pay, at the least for unrecoverable costs (e.g. wages) and loss of profits - if they pay for the cleaning products the cleaner would be obliged to deliver them up. One of the main reasons for the length of contracts for non-trivial transactions is they deal with these contingencies.
Adults are bound to contracts with minors The technical term is that a contract with a minor is that it is voidable by the minor unless it is subject to the exemptions - a contract for necessities or a contract of benefit to the minor (e.g. a reasonable mobile phone contract). Until the minor chooses to void it, it is binding on everyone involved. They can do this anytime before they reach majority or within a reasonable time after that providing the contract is not complete. That means, for one and done transactions, the contract cannot effectively be voided because the contract is complete - think of a child buying an ice cream, riding a bus or going to the movies. If it is voided, the minor is obliged to return whatever consideration they received and that is still in their possession. So, for the mobile phone contract, if it included a handset, they must return that providing they still have it.