Equine Law Blog

Time to Make a Change: How to Amend Your Contract

Our clients have asked how to amend their contracts, especially after they hire us to draft them and want our new contracts to replace the old ones.

Amending a contract is not difficult as long as your documentation makes clear what you are trying to accomplish. In our experience, however, we've seen equine business operators draft their own contracts which are anything but clear and cause problems. Of the many ways in which a contract can be amended, here are a few examples:

• The new contract can specify that it replaces the old. Depending on the contract, it can also specify that it contains the entire agreement between the parties with respect to the subject matter and incorporates and integrates all previous negotiations, understandings, and promises between them, either oral or written, with regard to its subject matter (such as the lease of a horse, equine sale, boarding agreement, etc.). Lawyers call these provisions “merger and integration clauses.”
• Some amendments only refer to a portion of a contract, such as a mutual agreement on a rate increase. Amendments like that can either have the parties re-sign a completely new contract, that incorporates the increased rate within it, or they can sign a short document acknowledging the former contract, reaffirming that all provisions within it remain valid and enforceable, and citing one specific section of the old contract with an acknowledgement that only that section is amended as of a certain date.

Contracts can cause expensive disputes, and details can make a difference. The cost of hiring a lawyer to prevent a dispute is usually a small fraction of the cost of hiring a lawyer to resolve one.

Categories: Contracts