 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 promises 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 that the courts will not support a person's promises. If someone makes a person a promise that they don't keep, that is not a situation where the courts will intervene. The courts are there for justice services to we the people. They will not take sides in one party or the others in a dispute based on a simple promise. That does not yield justice services to we the people except in some fairly well-defined cases. Most of the promises that are supported are for commercial purposes. They promote commerce where the ability of one person to trust another yields an effective benefit for the commercial efforts involving multiple people. Signature documents are largely supported. It is legal support for the one who has affixed the signature to a document in order to have it accepted by others. This would apply to court documents where a pleading is given to the court as a basis for initiating a prosecution of a legal cause. The signature of the person making the pleading or his lawyer as a legal agent for the purpose 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 of the document. The court will react negatively to any false documents. The oath or 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. Statement 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 falsehood to such officers is often considered a punishable crime. In that sense, every signed document is a promise of the appropriateness of the document that is signed. Consider signing an IOU $10. As it is a signed note, then the bearer can demand payment of the money from the one who signed it. The court 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 was not in any specified person nor limited in effect to some time or place when 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 ballgame 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 one party intends. Tina, a young and pregnant single woman, indicates her intention to give up her baby for adoption and signs a contract with an attorney to complete the transaction. She signs a promise and the surrender of her child upon birth for adoption. Peter, Paula and the 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. On the birth, the mother discovers that she has made a terrible error and refuses to give up her child. The basis for legal action is expenditure on 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 go smoothly forward. The courts can see this as a tort against the parents. They can sue it law for recovery of provable damages and perhaps for other damages as well. The proof of action is written promise. The proof of damage is their receipt of expenditures. The only question remaining is for adjudication is proof of whether her actions were the approximate cause of the damages they claim. When any person signs documents, 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 a high school prom but only rents one, there is no cause of action that a 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 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 his signature. He dies during the night. The family wants to limit her inheritance in accord with the written will. But she goes to an attorney based on Arnold's witnessed intent that the will not be accepted as then written and that he had already acted on that intent through his attorney as his agent. The court 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 are somewhat like this and matters already settled through precedence. For our purposes, 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 be negotiations once the court is involved and the parties settle their differences out of court. The rule, though, is that the courts will refuse action based on infamily promises. If there had been no non-family witness to the promise to Nicky, then it is likely the courts would refuse to accept the suit. Terry forges a $50 bills. He uses a number of these bills to pay for jewelry in a city far from his home and promptly disappears with his now valuable gains from the effort. Joanna, owner and operator of the jewelry business, pays the workmen who were painting her facility and who insist on cash with some of the bills. They take these to the buy groceries, but 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 suffered damages and that Terry was the proximate cause of those damages. The question of 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, that she knew the fake bills were among those Terry used to scam her. She only discovered the problem when she tried to deposit the cash earnings. She would have paid the painters with a check drawn from the commercial account, but the painters insisted on cash. The courts might not accept the painter's attempted suit. Joanna is not accused of wrongdoing to the painters, but being fooled by the same false tokens that initially fooled them. It is likely that the courts would not even attempt to take sides on the matter, shifting criminal damage between parties. The same basic logic would apply to the 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 the forgery, thinking it genuine. The sale was as agreed between the parties and honestly based on what they both accepted as genuine paintings. The court generally supports the acceptance of signature documents or works of art as being genuine documents 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 was forged is probably stuck with a loss. It is a risk that a stranger takes in giving commercial effect to a signed promise. The risk is much less when they see the other party sign it and no one recognize him or her personally. In the negative, we also have promises that the courts will not accept as a basis for legal action independent of commercial considerations. Johnny, 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 agent, even though long forgotten, burial ground that he cannot legally move for health reasons. He is forbidden to build the road straight. When he submits the new plan, he finds that several of the owners of land on that 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 courts will not hear it beyond the pleading of its illegality. Even if John was one 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, as when two conmen share equally in the proceeds of a scam. Where one refuses the other, the courts will not interfere on behalf of the one who gets stiffed. The court does not honor illegal acts. Also, the court will not give credit to immoral promises, as in payment to a woman for sex outside of 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.