Sarah Godfrey, associate at Bircham Dyson Bell LLP believes that King Abdullah of Jordan's court battle with the trustees of a London estate for allegedly refusing to honour a 'gentlemen's agreement' is unlikely to be successful as gentlemen's agreements can not be enforced by our law.
"The belief that an Englishman's word is his bond simply has no grounds in English and Welsh law," explains Sarah.
"To make a valid contract at law there must be an intention to create legal relations but the whole point of a gentleman's agreement is that it relies upon the 'decency' and 'honour' of the parties rather than the law to bind the parties."
"Another reason why these agreements often fail is that they are too ambiguous. To make a valid contract, there must be certainty and often these gentlemen's agreements take the form of 'an agreement to agree' where some terms are left unclear, and therefore there is no valid contract.
"Where there is clear intention to form legal relations, the courts do often try to construe the terms of contracts so that they can be enforced, but where the terms are simply too vague they may not be able to do so.
"Parties often enter into 'agreements to agree' in order to delay fleshing out details of a contract particularly where those details may be contentious. But taking this route is dangerous and can lead to disputes later.
"It's my advice that parties should not put off making difficult decisions and should iron out any differences at the outset to get to the crux of what they are actually agreeing to. They should also take legal advice to make sure that any so called 'gentleman's agreement' is contractually binding."
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