Contract Elements
Essential Elements of a Contract
A contract is an agreement – written or spoken – usually made upon sales, employment, or
leasing, which is enforced by law. According to Blokhina Gilkis (2019), there are several elements
making an agreement a legally enforceable document. These include a mutual agreement delineated
by an offer from the one side and acceptance from the other; the act of consideration; the capacity
of a person; and legality of purpose. However, it is acceptable to have the elements substituted by
valid equivalents depending on the state.
Contracts have to start with an offer, which expresses one’s willingness to negotiate a
contract under particular terms. In its turn, acceptance by the other party is an agreement to all of
the contract’s terms. Acceptance has to be unequivocally expressed to the person who makes the
offer (“Elements of a contract,” n.d.). Furthermore, consideration is merely each parties’ act of
exchanging valuable assets to their detriment with provided consideration from both of them. When
it comes to capacity and legality, it seems reasonable to turn to the laws of the state of Texas in
order to explore the statutory requirements.
Enforcing Contracts in the State of Texas
First of all, it is to be noted that Texan laws do not substantially differ from those stated
above. “A Guide to Texas Law” (n.d.) enumerates offer, acceptance, and consideration as essential
elements of a contract and then proceeds to name defenses to contract, among which are the legality
of the act and capacity of the parties. The comment on legality points out that even if two people
have exchanged offer and acceptance and provided their consideration, but the contract’s subject
matter is illegal, the contract’s validity is infringed, and, therefore, the contract is non-existent. The
paragraph on the capacity of the parties explains that all of them have to be competent in order to
make a legal agreement – usually, not underage, mentally disabled, or inebriated. Other defenses to
