 If Ted promises to take his buddy Phil fishing with him, and goes without him, that is not a matter where the court will take jurisdiction for resolution. If Phil has promised Jane that he will marry her, but makes the same promise to Linda, the courts are not going to accept jurisdiction to resolve the matter. The general rule is the courts will not support a person's promises. If someone makes another person a promise and doesn't keep it, that is not a situation where the courts will intervene. The courts are there for justice services to we the people. It will not take sides with one party or the other in a dispute based on a simple promise, and does not yield a justice service to we the people except for some fairly well-defined cases. Most of the promises that are supported are for commercial purposes. They promote the ability of one person to trust another where it yields an effective benefit for commercial efforts involving multiple people. Signature documents are largely supported. It is legal action where someone has affixed a signature to a document in order to have it accepted by others. This would apply to court documents, where a pleading is given to a court as a basis for initiating a prosecuting or a legal cause. The signature of the person making the pleading or of his lawyer as a legal agent for that person is necessary to get things moving. And the court relies upon the signature as a promise that the documented pleadings contain no lie or misstatement. The courts will act based on that promise, doing what is appropriate to the acceptance and furtherance of the cause in that document. The court will react negatively to any false documents. The oath and affirmation of judges and other public office holders are recognized as supportable promises, and judges can take jurisdiction of the situation upon failure to keep that promise. As made to the police or other public agents can be considered as supported by promise of accuracy, such statements can be accepted as legal evidence of the truth of what was said. Telling falsehoods to such officers is often considered a punishable crime. In that sense, every signed document is a promise of appropriateness of the document that is signed. You're signing a writing that says, I owe you ten dollars. As it is a signed note, then the bearer can demand payment of that money from the one who signed it. The courts will accept jurisdiction of the cause if the signatory to the note refuses to pay upon its production. It does not matter who turns it in for payment, as it is not to any specific person, nor limited in effect to some time or place where it can be produced for payment. This works only for commercial purposes. The person who promises in writing to take his neighbor's children to a ball game is not going to be legally liable for any failure to perform that promise. Neither will the courts readily accept a written promise that is between close family members unless it is signed by both parties. The assumed relationship is one of trust and the document simply states what the party intends. Tina is a young and pregnant single woman and indicates her attention to give up her baby for adoption and signs a contract with an attorney to complete the action. She signs a promise to surrender her child upon birth for adoption. Peter, Paula and their attorney meet with her and she sees that they will be excellent parents. On the strength of her promise, they enter into a contract with the lawyer and they go out and prepare for the birth as if it was their own child. They buy furniture and prepare a place for the newborn and alert their family physician of the situation. Upon the birth, the mother believes she made a terrible error and refuses to give up her child. The basis for illegal action is expenditure in reliance upon the promise. While the new mother does not have to give up her baby, her promise was an action that caused the other pair to enter into contracts and expend in reliance upon her promised action. If they had not entered into those actions, the promised adoption would not be able to smoothly go forward. The courts can see this as a tort against the parents. They can sue in law for recovery of provable damages and perhaps other damages as well. The proof of action is the written promise. The proof of damage is the receipt from expenditures. The only question remaining for adjudication is proof that her actions were the approximate cause of the damages they claim. When any person signs a document, there may be consequences. Such actions are never assured of any success. And the attorney can easily refuse to represent them due to the counterclaim that the young lady was not in her very pregnant state, fully aware of the consequences of signing the agreement or her pending role as a new mother nursing her own child. The courts will refuse most promises within the family. If Bobby promises to purchase a tux for his son's use in the high school prom, but only rents one, there is no cause of action that the court would address. There are again promises that have commercial impact that can reach under special circumstances the threshold of official recognition. Arnold, a wealthy man with a second and much younger wife, is terminally ill. He witnesses his intent to override their prenuptial agreement that limited Nikki's inheritance, stating that her 15 years of devotion has been the joy of his life. He immediately instructs his attorney to do the paperwork for the change and have it ready in the morning for the signature. He dies during the night. The family wants to limit her inheritance in a court with the written agreement, but she goes to an attorney based on Arnold's witnessed intent that the will not be accepted as then written, and he had already acted on that intent through his attorney as his agent. The courts would accept the cause as a commercial matter. The outcome of such a suit is not certain. There may be rules of inheritance that the courts are directed to follow. There may be prior cases that were somewhat like this, certain matters already settled through precedents. For our purpose, it is enough that the courts will accept the suit based on the promise and work to settle the matter. It is likely that there will be negotiation once the court is involved and the parties settle their differences out of court. The rule, though, is that the courts will refuse actions based on in-family promises If Arnold's attorney had not been a witness to the new promise to Nicky, it is likely that the court would refuse to accept the suit. Terry forges $50 bills. He uses a number of these to pay for jewelry at a far city from his home and promptly disappears with his now valuable gains from the effort. Joanna, owner and operator of the jewelry business, pays the workman who are painting her facility and who insists on cash with some of these bills. When they try to spend them on groceries, the feel is wrong and the manager refuses to accept them. The bills are soon exposed as forgeries. Can they sue Joanna for passing them? To sue they must allege two things, that they suffer damages and that someone's dishonesty was the approximate cause of those damages. The question is, who gets stuck with the loss? Joanna, who probably still has several of the bills, is a loser too. The question is whether the painters can stick their loss on her. Nobody is alleging that Joanna has done anything wrong, but she knew the fake bills were among two. Those Terry used to scam her. She only discovers the problem when she tries to deposit her cash earnings. She would have paid the painters with a check drawn on her commercial account, but the painters insisted on cash. The courts might not accept the painters' attempted suit. Joanna is not accused of wronging the painters, but being fooled by the same tokens that initially fooled them. It is likely that the court would not even attempt to take sides on the matter, shifting criminal damage between victims. The same basic logic would apply had it been an excellent forgery of a painting. The one who ends up with the forgery is the victim of the original crime. He or she does not get to sue the one who sold him or her a forgery thinking it genuine. Their sale was as agreed between parties, and honestly based on what both accepted is genuine painting. The courts generally support and accept signature documents or works of art as being genuine, and will honor them so long as the forgery is not unmasked. The one who accepts an IOU in place of money, only to find that it has been forged, is probably stuck with the loss. It is a risk that a stranger takes giving commercial effect to a side promise. The risk is much less when they see the other person cited and know and recognize him or her personally. In the negative, we also have promises that the court will not accept as a basis for legal actions, independent of commercial considerations. John, a county construction engineer, promises to build a straight roadway between two towns. The value of land shifts in accord with this promise, raising the price for land along the straight path. He discovers that there is an ancient, even though long forgotten, burial ground that cannot be legally moved for health reasons. He is forbidden to build the road straight. When he submits the new plans, he finds that several of the owners of land on the straight path have sold out to developers and their land is suddenly reduced in value. Do they have a basis for a suit? The answer is that John cannot promise to do something illegal. If building the road as planned is illegal, John cannot be liable under his promise. The court will not hear it beyond the pleading of its illegality. Even if John was one of those who sold land, the courts would not hold him liable. This is more an issue where the parties would intentionally agree to do something that is knowingly criminal. There are two condmen sharing equally in the proceeds of a scam. If one refused to reimburse the other, the courts would not interfere on behalf of the one who gets stiffed. The court does not honor illegal acts. Also the courts will not give credit to immoral promises as in payment of a woman for sex outside the marriage or payment of ransom for returning someone's child unharmed. A man's promise to help raise a child of his mistress can have commercial impact, but will not be given legal effect by the courts. The courts will get involved in personal problems with commercial impacts, but only deal with the commercial effects, not the promise itself. If there is fraud, the courts may accept an action in tort or a plea in equity for someone who is threatened with economic harm. The courts are unlikely to get involved in any distribution or reallocation of harm among victims of criminal misconduct.