VOID AGREEMENTS

Speaking, an agreement between parties is simply agreeing of two parties upon the terms and condition set by any party. An agreement arises when one of the parties makes a proposal or offer and the other party accepts the same. If we take an example, if a person namely, A wants to sell his car for a certain price and the other person namely, B accepts that offer to buy that car at that price, then there arises a contract between the two parties, A and B.The Indian Contract Act 1872 defines void agreement as an agreement that is not enforceable by law which means if the parties perform the agreement, it will be valid but in case one of the parties do not perform the agreement, the court cannot compel them to do so. There is a list of some agreements that have been declared as void by the Indian contract act 1872. These include; an agreement to do an impossible act, agreement in restraint of marriage, an agreement which is uncertain, agreement by way of wager, agreement in restraint of legal proceedings, agreement in which the consideration of the object is not lawful, agreement in restraint of trade and agreement without consideration.

 Starting with the first possibility, why an agreement could be declared void if the performance of the contract is impossible, then, it can be declared as void both in India as well as in England. Also under section 56, there are two kinds of impossibilities defined, first is the impossibility during the making of the contract and secondly is the impossibility of performing the contract, which means that first that contract was possible but now due to some uncertain circumstances a situation arises that performance of that agreement becomes impossible. Agreement in restraining a marriage of a person other than a minor is also a void agreement. An uncertain agreement is also termed as a void agreement. Section 29 mentions that agreements, the meaning of which is not certain or capable of being made certain, are void. The meaning of the agreement should be certain or should be capable of being certain if the agreement is to be called void. A wager agreement is also a void agreement. A wager agreement is nothing but a preliminary estimate of a certain event. In this type of agreement, two parties agree to pay each other a decided amount of money to the other person if their determination of an event proves to be wrong. It is an agreement in which a person making the right guess about a certain event wins the money from the other person which is lawfully void. Agreement in restraint of legal proceeding is also a void agreement. This means that any agreement that restricts a person from exercising his legal rights in a court is a void agreement as this is against the public policy. Agreement in which the consideration of the object is not lawful is a void agreement. This includes if it is forbidden by the law or if it is fraudulent or if the court regards it as immoral i.e against the public policy or if it includes injury to a person or property. If a person is restrained from performing a certain business, profession or trade of any kind is declared as void. Consideration means doing something for the return of the promise.

SO, ignoring of all the above factors in an agreement makes an agreement, a void one and both the parties need to look into the matter that all these conditions are fully satisfied if the parties want to make a void agreement.