Contract

That is, it is a voluntary agreement between two parties, called debtor and creditor, which can be physical or legal; Furthermore, each party may be made up of more than one person, thus, there may be more than one debtor and / or more than one creditor bound by the contract.

The persons involved in a contract must consider themselves capable and offer their consent free from any pressure, and any tradeable item may serve as an object. According to this, the contract can be:

• Oral in nature.
• Of written character.

In the case of being written, its parts include: title, which indicates the type of contract; substantive body, which points to the parties; exposition, which links relevant events; normative body, which includes normative clauses; closing, which consists of a formula that shows how to carry out the agreement; and, finally, the annexes, which explain some aspects of the contract.

The contract represents for the debtor or debtors, a contractual obligation, named for the source from which it arises, and through which it must / must comply in favor of the creditor, what is known as a benefit. This provision can consist of a giving (either to deliver something owned or to establish a real right over an asset), in a doing (founding a company), in a not doing (the director refraining from collaborating in the business of other companies) or to deliver something in possession (rent some offices).

Types of contracts

Depending on the effective date, the contracts can be:

• Consensual : These are concluded and begin to take effect with the agreement of the parties, as occurs in a sale.
• Real : When they begin to take effect after the agreement is delivered, as occurs for example when lending money for a while.
• Solemn : A type of contract that is subject to the fulfillment of certain formalities so that it begins to fulfill its effects.

Depending on the duration of the contract, they can be:

• Temporary : In this case, it establishes the duration or period of time of the situation in question (work activity, rent, etc); in parallel, it can be established that the contract will be void when one of the two parties decides to terminate it, and may even have to respond to special obligations.
• Permanent : It is a type of contract that is established without a time limitation regarding the period of performance of the service.

Depending on the number of parties participating in the contract, these can be:

• Unilateral contract : The obligation arises for only one of the parties, one of the contracting parties is a creditor and the other a debtor.
• Bilateral or synalagmatic contract: Both parties contract obligations, these being interdependent between the parties.
• Imperfect synalagmatic contracts : Those that, a priori, are unilateral (when the contract is established, it only contracts obligations for one of the parties) but obligations may arise for the other party.

According to the benefit of the parties:

• Free contract : In this, only one of the contracting parties obtains advantages.
• Onerous contract : This has two types, the commutative and the random. We speak of onerous commutative when one of the parties is obliged to give or do something that is seen as equivalent to what the other party must give or do; and it is onerous random if the equivalent consists of an uncertain profit or loss contingency.

According to its composition:

• Main contract : One that exists on its own, without the need for another to complement it.
• Accessory contract : This does not exist by itself, it depends on another. This occurs, for example, in guarantee contracts, such as the mortgage, which are intended to guarantee the payment of a loan.

Obligations and clauses

When the debtor does not comply with his obligation, contractual responsibility arises for him, and he may be sued by the creditor for compliance, or to repair the damage caused by his breach, unless he claims that it was impossible, proving in this case the reasons that prevented it. For example, that he was unable to clean the office for which he was hired because he accidentally broke his leg.

As a final guideline, it must be taken into account that, although the contract is considered law between the parties, for reasons of equity certain clauses cannot be established in some of them. Specifically, in the employment contract the current regulations and the maximum limit of working hours must be respected; in case of doubt, this type of contract is resolved in its interpretation in favor of the worker.