Contracts and Cocktails

We have all heard the following phrase a million times: marriage is a contract.  But is it?  A quick perusal of the internet gives you a fairly standard definition of the word "contract," which tends to be the same from state to state in this fine country of ours:

contract 1) n. an agreement with specific terms between two or more persons or entities in which there is a promise to do something in return for a valuable benefit known as consideration. Since the law of contracts is at the heart of most business dealings, it is one of the three or four most significant areas of legal concern and can involve variations on circumstances and complexities. 

The existence of a contract requires finding the following factual elements: 

a) an offer; 

b) an acceptance of that offer which results in a meeting of the minds; 

c) a promise to perform; 

d) a valuable consideration (which can be a promise or payment in some form); 

e) a time or event when performance must be made (meet commitments); 

f) terms and conditions for performance, including fulfilling promises; 

g) performance. 

Contracts can be either written or oral, but oral contracts are more difficult to prove and in most jurisdictions the time to sue on the contract is shorter.

Marriage does not meet any of these conditions.  In addition, if you buy a car in Oregon, there are many requirements pertaining to providing the purchaser with all the relevant information so they are not taken advantage of by the seller.  In other words, the state seeks to protect its citizenry by ensuring they enter into a contract with full knowledge and with eyes wide open.

On the other hand, you can go to a county office anywhere in the state and apply for a marriage license, but nobody there will explain to you what your rights and responsibilities are once you tie the knot (the knot that may someday feel like a noose if you are hit with alimony payments).

Because I am working today and because I promised my son we would go see The Hunger Games, this post will be brief.  I plan to go much further in depth in terms of analyzing why a marriage is not a contract in a future post.  But I would point out today that marriage is the only contract I am aware of in which a party has no idea what they are promising, no written terms to review, no real consideration, and if the other party breaches the contract, the non-breaching party can pay unlimited damages until the day they die.  The court doesn't care who breached and who did not, they only consider how hard one party worked to earn income, and then they punish you for it.

I will be hosting a cocktail party so we can all get to know each other better and strategize for the hearings coming up this summer.  Please email me at robindescamp@yahoo.com and let me know if you can attend on April 28 and how many people you will be bringing.  Anyone interested in reforming this broken and sexist system is welcome to attend!