CONTRACT LAW: General requirements

The requirements (in layman’s terms) for a valid contract is that:

1.   There must be a mutual understanding between the contracting parties.  The must therefore have been a ‘meeting of minds’ when the contract was concluded.

2.   The parties must have intended that the result of the contract may be enforced.

3.   The parties must be allowed to contract.  An example is that a child or a mentally ill person is not allowed (competent) to contract.

4.   The agreement must have certain and definite terms. 

5.   The necessary formalities must be observed.

6.   The agreement must be lawful^.  You may, for instance not allow a teacher to inflict corporal punishment on your child as it in unconstitutional and ‘against the law’.

7.   The contractual obligations must be possible of performance.  You cannot rely on a contract where it would be impossible for either of the parties not to be able to do what is expected of a party.

8.   The content of the agreement must be certain.  It may therefore not be vague.

If these requirements are not met, the contract will be null and void.

LABOUR LAW

Fixed term contracts

Be careful to enter into fixed term contracts with employees.  The new Labour Law in SA, which took effect in early 2015, provides that fixed terms contracts can only be entered into where the employer has a justifiable reason why it is a fixed-term contract.  "Justifiable reason" means a good reason, in layman's terms.

Employers have been hiding behind fixed-term contracts for decades as they did not wanted to pay benefits in terms of the employment of employees, such as medical, leave etc.  At some stage the labour brokers were used to fulfill the obligations mentioned.

But labour brokers have now been restricted vastly in their role in the labour law and the obligations, as referred to above, have been returned to the employers.

The situation now is that employers may only enter into fixed-terms contracts where the end date is justifiable.

Further to this, the employer now runs the risk that employees do not only hold the expectation that their fixed-contract should be renewed on the same terms if their fixed-term contracts have been continuously renewed.  In terms of the new labour laws of South Africa they now have an expectation of permanent employment!

I have been in the Legal Profession for about 32 years.  

Legal Representation has become extremely expensive.  One of the problems are that clients do not know what there answer to their dispute (such as the Police arresting you for an alleged offence or someone owes you money, your laborer takes you to the CCMA, you want a contract drawn up or interpreted, you want a will drawn up etc, etc)

The idea of this blog is to empower you with legal knowledge, so that when you go to a lawyer, you are prepared on a subject, thus rendering your consultations SO much shorter and THUS SAVING YOU MONEY!

Here we go!