Valid Contract Analysis

REQUIREMENTS OF A VALID CONTRACT

A court of law will only award a remedy for a breach of contract, only if the contract is valid. A contract is a legal relationship between parties which entitles them to performance and/or obliges them to perform in terms an agreement. For a contract to be valid and binding in South Africa, the following requirements must be met:

There must be a “consensus ad idem” between the contracting parties.A consensus is referred to as “meeting of the minds” or “mutual agreement”.

In other words, parties must agree to the contract in the same sense, with an understanding of each party’s rights and duties. A consensus is a phrase used in contract law to describe the intentions of parties forming the contract.

A consensus

As each spouse is advised to sign an ante-nuptial contract. Each spouse retains his or her separate estate and each has full capacity to act only with hisar her own estate.

The agreement must be “lawful and physically possible” to perform.

Legal possibility: this implies that the agreement and its content must be permitted by the law. Therefore, the contract must be consistent with the law. A contract will be considered unlawful when its reason for existence or the rights and duties that have been agreed upon are forbidden by common law (a contract can be contrary to the common law because it is legally impossible to execute, or it is against good morals, or against public interest.) or statuary law (a contract that defects the purpose of statuary law will be considered void.)

Possibility and certainty of performance: the rights and duties following from the agreement, must be objectively possible to perform, at the time of the conclusion of the contract. Performance will be determined if the parties expressly mention the performance in their agreement. And it will be ascertainable if parties agree on a criterion or a formula to identify the performance or if they agree that a specified person will determine the

In accordance with the contract; Mrs Ngidi paid a sum of 10% of the agreed sum of money in order for Con-artist company to be able to perform in accordance of the contract. Though Con-artist Company received Mrs Ngidi’s deposit they failed to deliver ‘A’ Grade Double Glazed windows to Mrs Ngidi's house, instead they wanted to deliver ‘B’ Grade Double Glazed windows. And as a result to such actions, Mrs Ngidi has now lost faith in them and she would rather have her money back but Con-artist Company is refusing to do