Contracts and how they are made
A contract is a legally binding agreement between two or more parties. Most are simple contracts, made in writing or by word of mouth: buying lunch, hiring a plumber. A few, like buying land, must be specialty contracts: signed, sealed and delivered. Paper 1 asks what stops an agreement being valid almost every year.
By the end of this page you can
- Explain what a contract is
- Tell an offer from a counter-offer and an invitation to treat
- List the essentials of a valid simple contract
- Tell simple contracts from specialty contracts
Goals tick themselves off as you try the activities below.
Photo: DanTD, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped, the car’s details, a phone number and a sticker blurred, resized, JPEG q72.
The sign invites offers. A contract starts only when a buyer offers and the seller accepts.
How often it shows up in past papers
Paper 1 counts come from our past-paper bank of CSEC Principles of Business Paper 1s. The last-5 row shows how often it came up in the five most recent papers.
Inside this topic
- Making a contractLocked
- What makes it validLocked
- Key termsLocked
- Test yourselfmarkedLocked
- Practise for real · 23 past questionsLocked