Contractual Terms in English Law - "Subject To" Contracts

"Subject To" Contracts

If a contract specifies "subject to contract", it may fall into one of three categories:

  1. The parties are immediately bound to the bargain, but they intend to restate the deal in a formalised contract that will not have a different effect; or
  2. The parties have completely agreed to the terms, but have made the execution of some terms in the contract conditional on the creation of a formalised contract; or
  3. It is merely an agreement to agree, and the deal will not be concluded until the formalised contract has been drawn up.

If a contract specifies "subject to finance", it imposes obligations on the purchaser:

  • The purchaser must seek finance; and
  • When offers of finance arrive, the purchaser must make a decision as to whether the offers of finance are suitable.

This may also refer to contingent conditions, which come under two categories: condition precedent and condition subsequent. Conditions precedent are conditions that have to be complied with before performance of a contract With conditions subsequent, parties have to perform until the condition is not met. Failure of a condition repudiates the contract this is not to necessarily discharge it. Repudiation will always gives rise to an action for damages.

Read more about this topic:  Contractual Terms In English Law

Famous quotes containing the words subject to, subject and/or contracts:

    At first I intended to become a student of the Senate rules and I did learn much about them, but I soon found that the Senate had but one fixed rule, subject to exceptions of course, which was to the effect that the Senate would do anything it wanted to do whenever it wanted to do it.
    Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)

    In my experience, persons, when they are made the subject of conversation, though with a Friend, are commonly the most prosaic and trivial of facts. The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the character of individuals. Our discourse all runs to slander, and our limits grow narrower as we advance. How is it that we are impelled to treat our old Friends so ill when we obtain new ones?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    If love closes, the self contracts and hardens: the mind having nothing else to occupy its attention and give it that change and renewal it requires, busies itself more and more with self-feeling, which takes on narrow and disgusting forms, like avarice, arrogance and fatuity.
    Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)