As predicted, yesterday's entry seems to have gotten people looking at the contractual arrangements and following up. I'm glad and you'll be better off in the long run - believe me.
Along the same vein as yesterday, let's "talk" about those papers that are signed by only party. The most common example -promissory notes. I have a lot of clients who sign promissory notes - and a lot of them want to know why they have an enforceable agreement if they are the only ones who signed.
Without getting into an explanation that ate up $20,000 of the $90,000 of tuition spent on law school, here's the briefest possible explanation. Agreements are full of promises (which the Old English thought sounded stupid, so they called them "covenants"). Each promise has to either be bilateral (meaning each of you promises something) or a promise has to be supported by consideration (I am giving you something of value in exchange for your promise). So---when you sign a promissory note, you are promising to pay X dollars in exchange for the x dollars that the person who loaned it to gave. That's consideration for the money.
If that makes your head swim (you should have seen me in contract class 18 years ago trying to get my head around that), try this - you can enforce a written promise so long as whatever it is was signed by the person against whom you are seeking enforcement.
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