These days a quick google search will turn up at least ten online services that can provide you with a cheap, or even free, template for your legal documents. Need a landlord-tenant contract? A will? A non-disclosure agreement? You can find one for little or no money online. Yet, these algorithms-based services have many pitfalls that are not obvious to an untrained eye. They are often full of typos, discrepancies, ambiguities, and generalizations that are easily exploitable upon greater legal scrutiny. Once real lawyers get their hands on these contracts, they are often worse than worthless, frequently undermining the very contract you were trying to enforce by multiplying legal ambiguities that can be exploited by a skilled litigator.
Let us take for example a rental agreement between landlord, Bill, and a first-time tenant, Susie, for a five-year reoccurring lease on a summer vacation home. Now of course both Bill and Susie are entering into the contract in good faith, with the understanding it will allow them to protect their respective rights while avoiding any conflict in the future. But they do not want to incur extra costs to hire a lawyer for drafting the lease, so Bill the landlord downloads a free rental agreement from the internet, fills out the relevant information in the blank slots: such as, their names, the address of the property, the term of the contract, the amount of rent and the starting date. He signs the document and gives it to Susie to sign. Susie reads over the contract and to her untrained eye it looks like your run-of-the-mill rental agreement, so she also signs. Now Bill and Susie have a legally binding contract…or so they think.
Susie has a lovely time at the vacation rental for the first year, but the second year when she returns at the beginning of the summer, she finds that the property has sustained a great deal of damage from storms, pipes bursting, animals making their home in the empty rental over the winter and more. All of this has rendered the property uninhabitable, so she calls Bill. Bill on the other hand, thought it was obvious to Susie that she would need to check on the property over the winter. She is his only tenant, and he leased the property to her for a five-year period, without ever agreeing to maintain the property during the off-season. The property was habitable when she took position and Bill expected her to maintain the property to that original standard. The parties then predictably looked to the contract to determine who was responsible for repairing the damage. Unfortunately, the contract they chose would only cloud the issue and deepen the rift developing between the parties.
Unwisely, Bill and Susie used a contract that did not specify exactly who was responsible for the winter care of the summer rental property because it was designed for a year-round rental. In some sections of the contract there are some vague references to the obligations Bill has to maintain the property, and in others, vague statements on how Susie would need to maintain the property for the term of the contract. Now what will happen? Susie, who no longer has use of the property might stop paying rent to Bill until he fixes the vacation home, sue Bill for denying her enjoyment of the property during the summer season or for keeping her deposit unjustly. She might even sue him for not keeping the property habitable – which could potentially have legal implications for his other rental properties as well! On the other side, Bill could sue Susie for failure to pay rent, for failure to maintain the property in the state it was given over to her, and for breach of contract. Now Susie is not getting to enjoy her vacation and Bill is not receiving rent and both will likely spend thousands of dollars and possibly years of their lives dragging the issue through the Courts.
This kind of miscommunication and contract discrepancy is extremely common. As you can see, the repercussions of not having a contract that is tailored to your specific needs are immense. The contract Bill and Susie used might be perfectly acceptable for a year-round rental agreement, however, by not specifically discussing who was responsible for maintaining the vacation rental over the winter, the contract caused a world of hurt for both parties. Had they instead paid a lawyer at the start of the lease, when they were both entering into the contract in good faith, that lawyer could have easily prevented this conflict from ever arising and both Bill and Susie would have saved a fortune in legal fees and lost time.
These days, people are used to getting everything fast and for the cheapest possible price with a quick google search, but in the legal field that mentality can mean financial ruin. Legal documents are always less expensive and less difficult to enforce if they are done right the first time. We at Nolet Law urge you to save yourself a potentially devastating civil case by coming to us whenever you are planning on signing a legal contract. We can either write a contract for you or review a currently existing contract before you sign, highlighting the possible exceptions and loopholes that might come back to bite you in the future. When it comes to legal matters, an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure!
Contact us today and we will quickly and efficiently handle whatever legal documents you need drafted or reviewed!
