A contract is an agreement enforceable by law. But not all agreements are contracts. For an agreement to be a contract there needs to be consideration between two or more competent parties and should be done with free consent and a lawful object. For a contract to be valid there needs to be offer and acceptance too. Once all these elements are present, then it’s a valid contract.
There are two main kinds of contracts: unilateral contracts and bilateral contracts. A bilateral contract is an agreement in which each of the parties to the contract makes a promise or promises to the other party. For example, in a contract for the sale of a house, the buyer promises the seller Rs.10, 00,000 in exchange for the sellers’ house. In a unilateral contract, only one
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An offer to the general public is an offer in unilateral contract. In an advertisement where a person in promised an award if he provides information about a criminals an offer. But in contrast, when a seller issues an advertisement to the general public it is not an offer but an invitation to offer. The offerer is obligates to perform his promise as soon as the information is provided in the former case.
One distinctive feature of unilateral contracts in that there in only one promise. The promisee is expected to fulfill a certain promise and not a different or new promise by the offerer. So when A promises Rs.1000 to anyone who finds his dog. He doesn’t expect the people who read the advertisement to make him a promise in return to find his dog. Instead he expects the people to read the advertisement and search for his dog and return it to him. If someone finds and returns the dog to him, he is obligated to pay the