Offer and Acceptance part 1

Offer and Acceptance when present become an agreement. Courts, when deciding if a contract exists will attempt identify an Offer by one party and a unequivocal acceptance by the other. With the identifiable elements of Offer and Acceptance the matter will cease. A contracts first elements must be Offer and Acceptance.

At the point the Offer and Acceptance has been established it can be determined that an agreement of some sort does exist. Following this a court will then proceed forward to consider the element of the agreement.

To promise to do or to refrain from doing something in exchange for something from another party is considered an Offer. An Offer is a proposal where the acceptance of it will lead to an enforceable contract. Not all things that seems to be an Offer are in fact an offer. There is something known as an 'invitation to treat'. An example of an invitation to treat is displaying goods for sale or advertising. These are not Offers when acceptance of the deal constitutes a legally binding contract.

An offer can be made to an individual a group, or to the 'World at Large'. An offer must be a clear proposition and on the understanding and acceptance of the offer by an offeree a contract can be created. The acceptance of an offer must also be clear and uneqivocal.

OFFER (INDIVIDUAL)

If one is to make an offer to another, the offer is only valid to that individual. Another person can not accept an offer made by someone to another. Here's an example:

Bill advertises his car for sale for the amount of $5000

This is an invitation to treat! This is not an Offer. Bill is only notifying potential purchasers that he would be willing sell his car for $5000.

Teddy responds to the 'invitation to treat' He looks at the car and and asks Bill if he's firm on the $5000, Bill say 'you can have it $4900.

This is the the Offer. We can identify that Bill has offered his car to Teddy in exchange of the consideration of $4900.

If at this point, Bill's neighbor over hears the conversation and says 'I'll accept that, here's the money', this would not be Acceptance as the offer was made only to Teddy to purchase the car. What is actually happening is that the neighbor would be making an offer to purchase the car from Bill.

A question to consider at this point is that if Bill accepted the Offer from his neighbor where would that leave Teddy. This is where we get into the area of the withdrawal of an offer or the expiry of the offer. If Teddy had have counter offered $4800, then Bill could simply accept either offer. Bill has made an Offer to Teddy, Teddy can respond to that offer within a reasonable amount of time.

Teddy says, okay, I'll take the car for $4900.

Now we have Offer and Acceptance!

If Teddy was to counter offer $4800, Bill would be free to contract with his neighbor as a counter offer negates the original Offer. At this point Teddy cannot say, okay I'll have it $4900 and be Bill be bound as that would not be acceptance, the counter offer canceled the original offer. This would not be considered acceptance but rather an offer from Teddy to Bill to purchase the car for $4900 and it would be up to Bill whether to now accept the deal or not.

This can be a bit confusing at first and may take a bit of thinking to comprehend what an Offer actual is. You can test an offer with the following points in everyday terms.

• Is the 'offer' clear and concise?
• Is the 'offer' legal?
• Has there been no withdrawal of the 'offer'?
• Has there been no counter offer?
• Does accepting the 'offer' close the deal?

If you ask thos questions and you have answered yes to all of them then you can safely say that there is an Offer.