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the following BL TV program is brought to you by O'Flaherty law please enjoy welcome to learn about law my name is Kevin o Flaherty from O'Flaherty law and today we're going to answer the question of when is a contract valid if it's not signed by both parties so let's start with some basic principles here oral contracts are contracts they are exceedingly hard to prove but an oral contract can be valid what even if it's never reduced to writing so a contract requires offer acceptance and consideration consideration is just the exchange of value between both parties if all of those 3 things are present you don't even need a contract to be in writing to be valid except there are certain types of contracts which we discuss in more detail learn - about - law comm that fall within something called the statute of frauds and the statute of frauds requires that contracts of a certain type and there's a list of about seven different types of contracts need to be in writing in order to be valid and need to bear the signature of the person who is who's being held responsible for them so whoever is claiming that the contract isn't valid it needs to have their signature on it in order to be valid so here we're talking about contracts that are in a simple handshake agreement they're not contracts that fall within the statute of frauds so not in that select group of contracts that have to be in writing and signed we're talking about contracts that have been reduced to writing and have only been signed by one party so this is a situation where one of the parties sends the other party a contract with the signature and then the other party starts to act on the contract and can one can the parties get out of it saying well it's only been signed by one party so it's not a valid contract there are basically three principles and they're all kind of related that deal with this situation there's three and they're kind of three times when these contracts have held up and when we say hold up it's not like a normal contract where you have to kind of prove all the terms it's we have a writing everything in the contract is considered to be valid even though it's been signed only by one party and we're not arguing about the terms of the contract so one principle here is that if the parties have acted in a way that's consistent with the written agreement even if both parties haven't even if one of the parties hasn't signed it the written agreement will hold up generally as long as it doesn't fall within the statute of frauds so this is a situation where you know a business is providing a service to another person or another business they send the contract over that requires monthly payments and the other party never signs the contract but the service is provided and monthly payments are made so that both parties are acting as if they had both signed the contract in this case the parties will be bound to the terms of the written contract another situation is when the party who is trying to be held accountable for the contract failed to object to it at the time then continued to act so this is very similar but this is the situation that we use in as an example is if the parties are agreeing to paint a house and they've said said okay I'll paint your house for you know five thousand dollars and then the person who is contracting to have their house painted sends over a contract for the painter to sign in which a timeframe is specified the painter thinks the timeframe is unreasonable but never objects to it never says no I can't do it in that timeframe and never says no I'm not gonna sign your contract the painter doesn't sign the contract but just goes ahead and paints the house in this situation if the painter takes longer than that timeframe they may be held accountable for it because they've acted and again it's acting in a way consistent with the contract they've given the other party no reason to believe that they found the timeframe unreasonable going forward with the contract without objecting after the written contract had been sent over is a good argument that the contract should be held up and that leads us to our final point is that if the contract is held valid for one part of the written contract the entire contract written contract is valid so when we talk about the timeframe included in the house painting contract if the court if a court were to find that yes the person required to go to paint the house within that time frame because that he didn't object to it then it's not just that timeframe portion of the written contract that is considered to be valid it's the entire writing and that's what differentiates this from an oral contract in an oral contract you're required to basically prove all of the terms of your agreement and what the meetings of the mind are here when we're talking about a written contract that's only signed by one party you just have to show that the cut the underlying contract is valid because the parties acted in a manner consistent with it and then now you've got a writing where every word of that writing should be valid contractual language that both parties can be held accountable for so if you have any questions please post them in the comment section below this video on our youtube station or below the post at learn - about - law comm we love answering your questions we try to get back to you within about 24 or 48 hours if you found this helpful please subscribe to us on YouTube iTunes and SoundCloud and feel free to call us for a free consultation at six three zero three two four six six six six the six three zero three two four six six six six we have four free consultations in almost every area of law and we have offices all around Chicago land for your convenience thank you so much for listening thanks so much for watching our video if you have any questions feel free to comment below click the subscribe button for new videos every week and download and review us on 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