Q. May anyone enter into a contract?
A. No. In order to make an enforceable contact, people have to be able to understand what they're
doing. That requires both maturity and mental capacity. Without both of these, one party could be at
a disadvantage in the bargaining process, which could invalidate the contract.
Q. What determines enough maturity to make a contract?
A. In this sense, maturity is defined as a certain age a person reaches - regardless of whether he or
she is in fact "mature." State laws permit persons to make contracts if they have reached the age of
majority (the end of being a minor), which is usually age eighteen.
Q. Does that mean minors may not make a contract?
A. No, minors may make contracts. But courts may choose not to enforce some of them. The law
presumes that minors need to be protected from their lack of maturity, and won't allow, for example,
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a Porsche salesman to exploit their naivete by enforcing a signed sales contract whose real
implications a young person is unlikely to have comprehended. Sometimes this results in minors
receiving benefits (such as goods or services) and not having to pay for them, though they would
have to return any goods still in their possession. This would apply even to minors who are
emancipated - living entirely on their own - who get involved in contractual relationships, as well as
to a minor who lives at home but is unsupervised long enough to get into a contractual fix.
Parents who give their children access to home computers hooked up to the Internet should
consider the situation that may arise if a child uses their credit card information online. This includes
information that may be stored in the computer or at a website that recognizes your home computer
and, of course, doesn't know that a minor is the actual "shopper." From the point of view of the
website owner, the parent is the customer, and you may have a hard time avoiding liability for a
contract (such as for the purchase of merchandise) that your children have entered into using your
Internet identity.
Also, a court may require a minor or the minor's parents to pay the fair market value (not
necessarily the contract price) for what courts call necessaries (what you would likely call
"necessities"). The definition of a "necessary" depends entirely on the person and the situation. It
probably will always include food and probably will never include CD's, Nintendo cartridges or
Porsches. Minors who reach full age and do not disavow their contracts may then have to comply
with all their terms. In some states, courts may require a minor to pay the fair value of goods or
services purchased under a contract that minor has disavowed.
Source: Chapter Nine Contracts and Consumer Law
http://www.abanet.org/publiced/practical/books/family_legal_guide/chapter_9.pdf
). Price of video game was comparable to a corn snake w/ shipping.