A Minor's Agreement Is Void Ab Initio

In one line

An agreement made by a person below eighteen is not a weak contract that the minor may escape from: in the eye of the law it never became a contract at all.

In the words a student can write in an exam: section 11 of the Indian Contract Act 1872 requires a party to be of the age of majority, and section 10 requires competent parties, so an agreement by a minor fails at the threshold and is void ab initio, meaning void from the very beginning. This was settled for India by the Privy Council in Mohori Bibee v. Dharmodas Ghose, (1903) 30 IA 114, and the consequence is that no suit lies on such an agreement against the minor, that it cannot be ratified on attaining majority, and that estoppel cannot be used to hold the minor to it.

Why this question needed deciding at all

The Act nowhere says in terms what happens to a minor's agreement. Section 11 says a minor is not competent; it does not say the agreement is void. That silence produced a genuine and long running dispute in the Indian courts before 1903.

Two readings were possible, and each had support.

Reading one: voidable. Section 11 protects the minor, so let the minor decide. On this view the agreement binds the other party and the minor may enforce or repudiate it. That is broadly the English position for many minors' contracts, and it is the reading Maclean CJ was prepared to assume in the Calcutta appeal in this very litigation.

Reading two: void. Competency is a condition of the contract's existence under section 10, not a personal privilege. If a party is not competent, the section is simply not satisfied and there is nothing there.

The difference is not academic. If the agreement is voidable, the minor who repudiates must restore what was received. If it is void, there is nothing to restore under the contract, because there was no contract.

The provisions

Section 11, so far as it matters here:

"Every person is competent to contract who is of the age of majority according to the law to which he is subject."

Section 10, which supplies the consequence:

"All agreements are contracts if they are made by the free consent of parties competent to contract."

Section 2(g) supplies the label:

"An agreement not enforceable by law is said to be void."

Read together the chain is short and it is worth being able to write it out: section 11 makes the minor incompetent; section 10 makes competency a condition of a contract; so the agreement is not a contract; and section 2(g) calls such an agreement void.