Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Jerry Carter with the Sierra Crest Business Law Group, and today I want to talk about contracts. A lot of people want to know what it takes to make an enforceable contract, or have they inadvertently put themselves in a position where someone can claim that they've entered into a contract. And so, basically in Nevada, a contract requires four things. The first is an offer, the second is acceptance, the third is a meeting of the minds, and the fourth is consideration. All of those are fairly specialized legal terms of art, and so I'll talk about each one in turn. An offer is basically when you offer to do something or to not do something on specified terms, and it can be something that you write in an email saying, hey, if you'll pick up my dog from the veterinarian, I'll buy you an ice cream cone. And so it can be an email, it can even be an oral conversation where you do that, but just something where you're telling the other side or another person what you'll do and what you'll do it in exchange for, so that's an offer. Acceptance is when the other person says yes, so they can communicate that yes in a number of ways. They can communicate it by saying yes, I agree to that. They can communicate it by just doing it. If you say, for example, I'll buy you an ice cream cone if you take my dog to the vet, they might just go take your dog to the vet, and that's how they say yes, is by just doing it, and sometimes there are questions about whether someone said yes, but usually you know if they said yes and they agreed to it. The third, which is one of the trickier ones, is the meeting of the minds, and basically the concept there is that you only have a contract if both sides agreed on the same thing. And so that can get a little bit interesting when each person has a different view in their own mind of what was agreed on, but usually where, in my experience in the courts, when there's an offer and there's an acceptance, and one of the other sides comes in later and says, well, we didn't agree on the same thing, usually the courts will work to hold the agreement together. And the way they do that is by saying, look, the words you use in ordinary conversation have an objective meaning. What you say has to mean something pretty much the same wherever you go, and you may have had some private meaning in your head, but we're going to go with the usual meaning of the words you used. And so usually as long as those are specific enough and you have enough to hold an agreement together, like there's reasonably certain timing, there's reasonably certain exchange of money or other valuable performance, reasonably identified who's going to do what, the courts are going to hold that together. But the concept under which we're doing that is the meeting of the minds. And the last element, the last required piece of an enforceable valid agreement is consideration. And what that means is that each side has to give something to the other. There has to be an exchange. It can't be just a gift. A gift is a wholly different animal. But for a contract, there has to be value going in both directions. And we don't always focus on money. Money is one way to have value going in both directions, but it can be an agreement to do something or an agreement not to do something. And truth be told, it doesn't take much in Nevada to hold an agreement together, to find an agreement going both ways. So for example, sometimes you'll see an agreement that says, well, I'm going to do this, that, and the other. I'm going to buy this land or whatever it may be in exchange for $10. And sometimes that's just a recitation. We're going to say this $10 because that's enough to hold the agreement together, even though we all know that the land I conveyed to you or sold to you is worth more than $10. And so when it comes to consideration, usually if there's any hint of an exchange between the parties, the Nevada courts are going to say, yeah, there's sufficient consideration to hold this deal together. So those are the elements of a valid and enforceable agreement, an offer, acceptance, a meeting of the minds, and consideration flowing in both directions. So now you have the legal concepts that'll help you understand if you have agreed to something that's an enforceable contract. I invite you to not only look into that, but to call us with any other questions you have about the validity of a contract or an alleged contract that you may be part of so that we can really drill down and look at your specific facts and circumstances and decide if there is an enforceable agreement. You can contact me at the Sierra Crest Business Law Group. The number is 775-448-6070. Again, 775-448-6070. Thanks. ♪♪♪♪