West Virginia Contracts Legal Questions

If I understand you correctly, an acquaintance of yours voluntarily shared his contract template with you, with no agreement regarding confidentiality.  If so, I don't believe that you would face any claims of stealing intellectual property if you use the template to create your own contract, but the problem is that you (presumably) want the ocntract to reflect West Virginia law,  while the template you've received (presumably) reflects Florida law.  Although the law of Florida and West Virginia may be very similar, they are not identical, and you should definitely have a West Virginia attorney look over the template before you use it. ... Read More

That depends.  Was the information material?  A failure to disclose unimportant information is not fraud, and will not invalidate the contract.  If the person selling you a car failed to disclose that the odometer had been rolled back 40,000 miles it would probably invalidate the contract; if  he neglected to tell you that the odometer had been rolleed back 3 miles, it probably wouldn't. Did the person who knew the information have a duty to disclose it?  As a very general rule, with many exceptions, one is under no duty to tell the other party about information that you know unless is is information that you had special access to (for example, you are probably not obligated to tell a party buying your property that it is only zoned commercial, because that is a matter of public record which they can find out; you probably would be required to tell them that a neighbor had disposed of toxic chemicals on his next door property) or you have made an affirmative representation about the subject matter (for example, if the seller told the buyer that the property was zoned residential, that would probably invalidate the contract, even though they could have found out tot he contrarty by checking). Did the person who was not aware of the information enter into the contract because of that lack of information?  If the person selling you a car failed to tell you that the odometer had been rolled back that would normally invalidate the contract, but you were only buying the car because it had once been owned by Elvis and weren't planning to drive it, you didn't rely on the failure to disclose, and won't be able to invalidate the contract.... Read More

In general, a contract does not need to be notarized or witnessed to be binding.  (Of course there are exceptions, such as those imposed for wills, for recording real estate documents, and possibly, involving divorce arrangements.)  But for most contracts, we do not generally require them to be witnessed or notarized, to be "legal."  The notary removes the issue as to the identity of the parties signing the contract.  But, it is not usually a prerequisite of a binding agreement.  Oral agreements are also generally binding (with some exceptions, such as contracts relating to the debts of another, real estate, or promises that will take over a year ro perform), but sometimes hard to prove.  It may be that as a matter of the family law in your state, the agreement must be notarized or witnessed.  Otherwise, it is up to the intent of the parties.  Your family law lawyer should help you on this.  If you don't have a lawyer helping you, I assume the amount involved with the contract doesn't really justify that expense. ... Read More