Contracts Fix the Content of the Parties Sample Clauses

Contracts Fix the Content of the Parties. Duties The ground of contractual duties affects how we specify their content. Contractual duties do not merely arise because parties exchange promises or consent—their promises or consent determine the content of their duties.131 This control is what makes contract law the paradigm of private ordering. The typical justification for this control appeals to autonomy: the state holds promisors to their expressed ex ante promises because that is necessary to respect them as agents who have exercised their authority over their moral lives. This reason to enforce contractual duties is, to a large degree, independent of the content of those duties.132 The function of contract law is not to enable people to pursue ends that the state considers valuable; instead, it is to respect the parties’ authority to pursue their own ends by controlling their interpersonal obligations.133 Parentage agreements, in contrast, do not empower adults to fix the content of parental rights and duties. Preconception agreements, VAPs, and surrogacy agreements establish parentage, full stop. Tailored parentage contracts, such as Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxxx’x, are unlikely to be enforceable in family court. This is not meant to disrespect nontraditional families. Even when traditional parents draft contracts covering similar matters, the contracts do not create binding duties enforceable in custody disputes. A parent cannot reduce a child’s right to financial support or agree to binding custody commitments.134 At most, a court will consider custody agreements as evidence of what the parties believed at the time was best for the child. Even if Xxxxxx’x contract was enforceable, the relation between its promises and parenthood’s default obligations differs fundamentally from 131. See Klass, supra note 119, at 40. 132. See id. at 43. 133. Xxxx X. Xxxxx, The Correspondence of Contract and Promise, 109 COLUM. L. REV. 1603, 1608–09 (2009). 134. See Xxxxxxx x. Xxxxxxxx, 835 So. 2d 1198, 1201 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2002). 2664 FORDHAM LAW REVIEW [Vol. 90 contract law and its defaults. Contract law typically assumes that parties do not have prior legal obligations to one another. Their duties are fixed by their promises or consent. Moral theorists admit that contract law sometimes imposes duties with gap-filling rules, but these defaults require special justification. Xxxxxxx, for instance, argues that parties express their assent to implied terms by not opting out of widely known default rules.135 Tailored pa...