Category: Capacity To Contract

ISSUE:

Whether a mortgage deed can be enforced against parties who were incompetent to contract at the time of agreement if the parties deliberately misinterpreted themselves to be competent?

RULE:

A contract by a minor is void and Sections 64 and 65 of the Contract Act have no application in such cases.

The plea of estoppel cannot prevail against a statutory provision protecting minors, and no new rule of equity can be invented contrary to established principles.

Section 65 is applied only to the contracts agreements which from their very nature were void and were either discovered to be void later or became void, and not agreements made by persons who were altogether incompetent to enter into an agreement and the agreement was, therefore, null from the very beginning (void ab initio).

Section 64 and 65 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 cannot be invoked against minor defendants.

ISSUE:

Whether a minor, who, by falsely representing himself to be a major, has induced a person to enter into a contract, is estopped from pleading his minority to avoid the contract?

Whether a party is entitled or not, when a minor has entered into a contract by means of a false representation as to his age, refuse to perform the contract and at the same time retain the benefit he may have derived?

RULE:

There is no rule of equity, justice and good conscience which entitles a court to enforce a void contract of a minor against him under cloak of restitution.