&quot;so long as you remain unmarried&quot;: Why a gratuitous promise in one fact pattern, but a contractual offer in another? Paul Davies. JC Smith's The Law of Contract (2018 2 ed). pp. 75-76. Can the two hypotheticals (orange and red) be distinguished? Why's the red a gratuitous promise but the orange an offer to contract? I can't? Both stipulate £5K/year and the phrase "so long as you remain unmarried" The orange has "Please do not remarry", but this feels superfluous as "so long as you remain unmarried" is already stipulated.
The idea is that, by default, we should assume the payment is a gift, unless we have specific evidence to suggest that it is offered in exchange for something. In the first case, the father-in-law has given no indication as to why he is giving her the money. It could be that he is indifferent to whether she remarries or not, and simply wants her to have a steady income in either case. He may be presuming that, if she remarries, her new husband will be able to provide for her, but until such time, he (the father-in-law) will pay her way. We certainly do not have evidence to show that he actually wants her to stay unmarried and is paying her for that purpose. In the second case, the father-in-law has given us more evidence. His words make it explicit that he does want her not to remarry, and that he is paying her in order to get her not to. Since he is clearly paying money with the intention of getting another party to do something (or in this case, to refrain from doing something), we understand it as a contract.
To form a contract, you must have: Intention to create legal relations Agreement Consideration Legal Capacity Genuine Consent Legality of Objects On the face of it, Alice and Bob's agreement meets these criteria so it is a legally binding contract and Alice would have every prospect of success in a legal action for breach of contract. Specifically: by writing out and signing the agreement they are showing an intention to be legally bound what they have each agreed to do is vey clear; more than many I have seen both parties have provided consideration: dog walking and money there is no suggestion that either was legally incapable of forming a contract genuine consent refers to them actually agreeing what they though they agreed, for example if Alice asked Bob to walk her dog (meaning the Great Dane) and Bob agreed (meaning the Jack Russell) there has not been genuine consent dog walking and paying money are both legal
I am not a lawyer; I am not your lawyer. You do not cite a jurisdiction so this makes it very difficult to get a definitive answer. What follows is for Australia but the general principles are common law and would be applicable to other common law jurisdictions except where statues apply or case law has diverged. In the first instance, it seems that you were not party to any arrangement to pay for the electricity. So on the face of it you are not party to any contract requiring you to pay. Even if there was such an agreement: family, domestic, social and voluntary agreements (which this would be) are presumed not to be intended to legally bind the participants. Whether this presumption would be overturned would depend on the specific facts. On the face of it, there is no legal obligation to pay. Your options are: Do nothing; this puts the ball in their court, they can: Forget about it (it would then be over) Attempt to sue you with little prospect of success (which would cost them and you a lot more than $50 irrespective of who won) Do something illegal like beating you up (you really need to assess this risk) Tell everyone they know (in person and on social media) what a skiving prick you are (you could probably sue them for damages but that's not really going to happen, is it?) Pay them what they are asking Offer to pay them something less. Option 1 is likely to break any relationship you have with the person, Option 2 is likely to preserve it and Option 3 could go either way. Ultimately, like most legal questions, this is not about the law; it's about relationships ... broken ones mostly.
Do I have to pay child support if we are just dating and not married? We are not planning on having a child, but what if by some odd chance she gets pregnant? Does it depend on where I live? Like Toronto? The Modern Rule In Most Developed Countries It does depend upon where you live. No jurisdiction of which I am aware has ever distinguished between a planned child and an unplanned pregnancy in making a child support award. The vast majority of countries that have a category of obligation called "child support" apply it without regard to whether the parents are married. This would include all jurisdictions in Canada and the United States. But, in those jurisdictions, liability for child support in the case of an unmarried couple requires a mother seeking child support from a father, to establish the father's paternity by any of a variety of means, within the time allowed by law. Given the availability of cheap and highly reliable DNA tests to establish paternity, this step is now almost trivial and often waived by fathers who simply admit paternity instead when paternity seems clear. In contrast, paternity is presumed rather than something that has to be proved in cases involving a married couple. There is an exception to this general rule in most jurisdictions that have child support at all. This is because the husband of a married woman who has a child is presumed to be the father. Therefore, a man who is the biological father of the married woman's child is only obligated to pay child support if the father's paternity is established within the time allowed by law by the husband, the mother of the child, or a third-party on behalf of the child with standing to do so. Also, in most jurisdictions that have a concept of child support payments, a termination of parental rights (generally for abuse or neglect, but also in connection with a legal adoption by someone else) also terminates obligations to pay child support payments that arise after parental rights are terminated, although this rule is not universal. Generally that exception would not apply in the fact pattern that you describe. Historical and Comparative Context Historically, the concept of child support was unknown, illegitimate children and their mothers had no rights with respect to their fathers (and fathers had no rights with respect to their illegitimate children in most circumstances), and only married people were entitled to post-divorce support from an ex-spouse that was known as alimony and alimony served to provide support to both the ex-spouse and their children. The harshness of this historical rule was mitigated somewhat by the concept of common law marriage that had the practical effect of declaring an unmarried man who caused an unmarried woman to become pregnant to be declared husband and wife despite not having actually having gone through a marriage ceremony in many cases. At that time, there was an incentive for the man to re-characterize the nature of the relationship retroactively, because if the woman was not a prostitute, it would often be a crime or tort for the man to have had sex with the unmarried woman, enforceable by the state or by her father or guardian. But, if the couple were deemed to have been common law married, then all of these sanctions could be avoided. At this time, in areas where the state was not powerful enough to enforce these kinds of sanctions for premarital sex giving rise to a pregnancy, social pressure and sometimes even a literal "shotgun" marriage would be used to force the father to marry to mother. Prior to the 19th century in Western predominantly Christian countries, the only way to get a divorce was by special legislation in which the legislature passed a law specifically ending a particular couple's marriage. In the 19th century, bit by bit, Western countries started to allow judicially decreed divorces under a general statute on a proof of fault basis, with alimony awarded to the not at fault spouse under a breach of contract damages styled analysis that did not involve a separate child support component. Bit by bit in various Western jurisdictions during the 20th century, child support began to be recognized as a separate obligation from alimony and property division in a divorce, as partnership theories of family law, and parent-child relationship based theories of family law, began to replace the contract based theories of family law in earlier divorce actions. Non-marital relationship entitlements to child support also arose around the same time. Many U.S. states have both civil and criminal penalties for failing to provide financial support to your child. Japan only recognized child support as a separate type of relief in family law in the late 20th century (multiple decades after World War II), and has never had post-dissolution of marriage alimony after a divorce, although it has had temporary support not clearly distinguished between alimony and child support, during the pendency of divorce proceedings (which tend to be much shorter than in the U.S. and Canada). The primary relief to a spouse upon a divorce in Japan historically was property division and complete allocation of each child to one parent or the other, with no child support or alimony post-decree, until these late 20th century reforms allowing for limited child support payments (which are still rarely actually received even when ordered by a court) were adopted. The analysis in countries where the parents of the child are subject to Islamic rules of family law are beyond my competence, but quite different. Unlike Western jurisdictions, Islam has recognized non-legislative divorce since its inception in the early 600s CE as did prior pagan communities in places where Islam arose. One of the main reasons that child support and alimony were rare or non-existent at the time in almost all countries was that the legal systems and economic systems in existence at the time made intangible monetary obligations to pay child support in regular installments over a long period of time, and to enforce custody arrangements, was effectively impossible for former spouses to enforce in all but a very small fraction of cases.
I see that most (all up to this point) answers and comments are made around if a verbal contract is binding enough for the employer to &quot;pursue back&quot; the extra payment that you received... but as far as I can see, they don't even need to consider the verbal agreement. Your employer thought (and apparently was right) that you were going to resign, so they offered you a payment raise in exchange for you to stay for two more years. You verbally agreed but this agreement was never written down nor signed by any of the parts, yet your employer respected it and for X amount of time you received more money that what your initial, written, signed contract says. Now you want to quit; as mentioned above, you only have your original contract, a contract that says two things that are key for this &quot;dilemma&quot;: The Employee will be paid £9/hr in arrears. Salary may be increased at the direction of The Employer subject to The Employee taking on additional responsibility which is agreed upon by both parties. If the Employer makes an overpayment to the Employee to which she is not entitled, or which is more than that to which she is entitled, the Employer has the right to recover the overpayment by deductions from the Employee's salary or from other payments due to them. You received payments for £11/hr, which is more that that to which you're entitled according to this (one and only) contract; so, your employer has the right to claim back those £2/hr that, officially, you were not entitled to. IF you want to argue that, as the 1st point says, both parties agreed to increase your salary for &quot;additional responsibilities&quot;, YOU would also have to admit that you agreed to stay for two more years, agreement that you are not complying to; so, once again, it's a point in favour for your employer. All in all, it all boils down to how your employeer &quot;feels&quot; when you present your resign letter; maybe they will just agree and let you go without further issues, but if they want to claim back that payment raise, IMO they have both the right AND the arguments to do so.
would it be interpreted in favor of the person who did not draft the terms? Yes, provided that the interpretation is reasonable. That is known as the doctrine of contra proferentem. Here, the term "deliverables and associated documents" might entail a contradiction if that term [allegedly or literally] encompasses "source code or content". That depends on what definition(s) of "deliverables and associated documents" can be adduced from the contract. The term could refer to items that are not "source code or content", such as the binary files (i.e., executables and DLLs), instructions &amp; documentation on how to operate and troubleshoot the application, and so forth. In that case, there would be no contradiction because there is no overlap between these items and the source code. if term A) is written on line 10 and term B) is written on line 11, is it resonable to assume term B) takes precedence or modifies term A? No. The sequence of clauses/terms itself does not determine which one outweighs or qualifies the other. Instead, the language used in the contract is indicative of the parties' intent and therefore how the terms of that contract relate to each other.
Here is a substantial collection of interpretive canons; this article discusses rules vs. canons. This article discusses contract interpretation from both the perspectives of drafting and litigating. These are all from the perspective of common law systems. This article (in English) and this chapter (English, paywall) reminds us that French contract law is different, to which I would add this which focuses on the French subjective theory of contracts – starkly distinct from the common law theory. This page (en français) will probably be of most interest to you. The 2016 modification to the civil code added art. 1190 (and other articles) which says Dans le doute, le contrat de gré à gré s'interprète contre le créancier et en faveur du débiteur, et le contrat d'adhésion contre celui qui l'a proposé which is contra proferentem. The Latin name is not officially assigned to this law, and being a new addition to French law, it's too early to tell if it will be so named in French legal practice.
If I did not sign promotion bonus document, my career would be over. Is this duress? No. The premise is hardly true or even logical, and what you describe falls short of duress. Not every imbalance of bargain power implies duress. First, it seems that you could have declined the bonus, thereby preempting the sanction/remedy for leaving within 12 months. Second, it seems hard to prove (and unrealistic) that your career would have been over if you refused to sign the document. The employer can easily refute that allegation by pointing out that there are many others who did not sign that employer's document and yet work elsewhere as investment bankers. You would need certain, additional context to reasonably allow for a conclusion that your career altogether depends on what happens with this single entity. Third, your mention that "the bonus mitigates the horrendous weekly hours" reinforces the idea that signing the document was your preference (namely, for the purpose of obtaining some additional, non-compulsory stimulus) rather than employer-inflicted duress. The rationale and decision for acceptance of those conditions reflects that you knowingly exercised your freedom of contract. A party is not entitled to void a contract only because he belatedly changed his mind about conditions of which he was aware beforehand.