The Statute of Frauds and the Parol Evidence Rule: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
25 flashcard terms for Contracts Topic 5, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 15-question quiz — free, no account needed.
A family of statutes requiring certain classes of contracts to be evidenced by a signed writing, so that oral agreements within a covered class are unenforceable rather than void.
MYLEGS categories
The traditional list of covered promises: marriage, contracts not performable within one year, land, executor promises, sales of goods at the threshold amount, and suretyship.
One-year provision
A promise is within the statute only if performance is impossible within one year by its terms; a contract of uncertain duration such as lifetime employment falls outside it.
Land contract provision
Contracts transferring an interest in real property, including sales, easements, mortgages and leases beyond the statutory term, must be evidenced by a signed writing.
Suretyship provision
A promise to answer for another's debt must be written, unless the main purpose of the promisor was to secure an economic advantage for itself rather than to aid the debtor.
Main purpose rule
An oral guarantee escapes the suretyship writing requirement when the guarantor's chief objective was its own pecuniary benefit, such as protecting its supply of a key component.
Sufficient memorandum
A writing satisfies the statute if it identifies the parties and subject matter, indicates a contract was made, states the essential terms, and is signed by the party to be charged.
Signature requirement
Any mark or symbol executed or adopted with intent to authenticate suffices, including letterhead, initials, or an electronic signature recognised by modern statutes.
Multiple writings doctrine
Several documents may together satisfy the statute if the signed one refers to the others, or the papers plainly relate to the same transaction and are physically connected.
Part performance in land contracts
Equity enforces an oral land contract where the buyer takes possession, pays part of the price, or makes substantial improvements unambiguously referable to the alleged bargain.
Estoppel against the statute
Some courts refuse to allow the statute as a defense where a party reasonably and seriously relied on an oral promise or on an assurance that a writing would be signed.
Effect of noncompliance
A contract within the statute but unwritten is generally unenforceable at the defendant's election; restitution remains available for benefits already conferred.
Parol evidence rule
A substantive rule barring evidence of prior or contemporaneous agreements that contradict, and sometimes that supplement, a writing the parties adopted as final.
Integration
The parties' adoption of a writing as the final expression of some or all of their agreement, a threshold determination that controls how much extrinsic evidence a court will hear.
Partial integration
A final writing covering only part of the deal; consistent additional terms may be proved, but contradictory prior terms remain excluded.
Complete integration
A final and exclusive writing, which bars both contradictory and merely supplementary prior terms, leaving only the document to define the bargain.
Merger clause
A recital stating that the writing is the entire agreement; it is strong but not conclusive evidence of complete integration, especially in adhesion or fraud settings.
Four corners approach
The formalist method determining integration solely from the document's own apparent completeness, associated with Williston and the more restrictive courts.
Corbin contextual approach
The method admitting extrinsic evidence provisionally to decide whether the writing was integrated and what the parties actually meant by their language.
Naturally omitted terms test
Under this test extrinsic terms are admissible if similarly situated parties would naturally have left them out of the writing, an approach applied in Masterson v. Sine.
Masterson v. Sine
Evidence of an oral term restricting an option in a family land transfer was admitted, since such a term might naturally have been omitted from the deed.
Mitchill v. Lath
An oral promise to remove an icehouse across the road was excluded, because the court thought such a term would ordinarily appear in the written land contract.
Pacific Gas and Electric v. Thomas Drayage
Traynor rejected plain meaning, holding that extrinsic evidence is admissible when the language is reasonably susceptible to the meaning a party urges.
Fraud exception to parol evidence
Evidence of fraud, duress, mistake, illegality or lack of consideration is admissible because it attacks the validity of the writing rather than varying its terms.
Condition precedent exception
Proof that the parties orally agreed the writing would take effect only on a stated event is generally admissible, since it shows there was no operative contract yet.