Legal Reasoning in the Enforceability of Domestic Contracts in Law: A Legal Appraisal

Abstract

Domestic contracts are deemed generally unenforceable in law as they are often time predicated on soft promises by relations without any intention to create legal relationships leading to strict contractual obligations and no iota of intention to be legally bound by such domestic contracts. The only given exception to this general rule is where the promisor is no longer living at amity with the promisee or where they have an estranged relationship in which case any such contract entered into by them would be deemed in law to be expectedly enforceable to the very latter. This paper takes a cursory look at the shift in the mind-set of courts in handing down decisions that seek to enforce or otherwise refrain from enforcing domestic contracts and tracing how the legal reasoning of the courts behind these decisions might have been influenced by the political and moral values of the principal actors of the courts. The paper concludes that even if law can avoid being constituted or formed by political and moral values properly speaking, it cannot avoid being applied by the colouration of the political and moral values of the Judges.