The statute of frauds refers to the requirement that certain kinds of contracts be memorialized in a signed writing with sufficient content to evidence the contract.
Traditionally, the statute of frauds requires a signed writing in the following circumstances:
- Contracts in consideration of marriage. This provision covers prenuptial agreements.
- Contracts that cannot be performed within one year. However, contracts of indefinite duration do not fall under the statute of frauds regardless of how long the performance actually takes.
- Contracts for the transfer of an interest in land. This applies not only to a contract to sell land but also to any other contract in which land or an interest in it is disposed, such as the grant of a mortgage or an easement.
- Contracts by the executor of a will to pay a debt of the estate with his own money.
- Contracts for the sale of goods involving a purchase price of $500 ($50 in Alberta, Canada) or more (proposed Amended UCC ยง 2-201(1) requires a writing for contracts for the sale of goods of a price of $5000 or more).
- Contracts in which one party becomes a surety (acts as guarantor) for another party's debt or other obligation.
This can be remembered by the mnemonic "MY LEGS": Marriage, contracts for more than one Year, Land, Executor (or Estate), Goods ($500 or more), Surety; or Marriage, one Year, Land, Executor (or Estate), Guarantor, Sale.
Read more about Statute Of Frauds: Terminology, Raising The Defense, Uniform Commercial Code, England and Wales, Scotland, Exceptions
Famous quotes containing the words statute of, statute and/or frauds:
“Now a Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded as descended from that tribe. That’s what it says in the dictionary; but you and I know what a Jew is—One Who Killed Our Lord.... And although there should be a statute of limitations for that crime, it seems that those who neither have the actions nor the gait of Christians, pagan or not, will bust us out, unrelenting dues, for another deuce.”
—Lenny Bruce (1925–1966)
“Now a Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded as descended from that tribe. That’s what it says in the dictionary; but you and I know what a Jew is—One Who Killed Our Lord.... And although there should be a statute of limitations for that crime, it seems that those who neither have the actions nor the gait of Christians, pagan or not, will bust us out, unrelenting dues, for another deuce.”
—Lenny Bruce (1925–1966)
“Nature will not let us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds and wars. When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the abolition-convention, or the temperance-meeting, or the transcendental club, into the fields and woods, she says to us, “so hot? my little Sir.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)