A contract is an agreement enforceable by law. Whenever an agreement is considered as binding and obligatory by the court in the sense that whoever fails to fulfill it may be sued, that agreement is a contract. Sir Williams Arson, in his book Principles of the laws of contract defined a contract as "a legally binding agreement made between two or more persons, by which rights are acquired by one or more, to acts as forbearances on the part of the other or others". However, some agreements are not contracts. Mere domestic agreement between husband and wife is usually not intended to be binding, and are therefore not contracts. .

             Contracts can be classified as any of the following:.

             1. Simple contract. Simple or "parol" contracts are by far the most common and important variety. They are informal, they can be oral or written or implied by conduct. It must posses the following :.

             ? An offer and unqualified acceptance.

             ? Valuable consideration.

             ? Genuineness of consent.

             ? Parties must have capacity to enter into the contract. The law of domicile (a person"s domicile is the country in which he resides with intention to remain there permanently) generally governs this.

             ? It must be legal.

             ? Possibility of performance.

             ? Certainty of terms, the parties must make their intentions clear.

             2. Contract by record. These are obligations whose terms are recorded by court records. They are not true contracts, since the obligations of the parties arise independently of any agreement and solely by reason of entry upon the court records. They can be judgement imposed by the court, a legal obligation or recognizance"s, which could be a written acknowledgement of debt, etc.

             3. Contract by deed. A contract by deed is a promise written on paper or parchment, signed, sealed and delivered (either actually or constructively) by the promisor to the promisee or his agent. It is brought about by special cases in law, which requires that a particular form shall be adopted, usually to provide better evidence of the terms and so prevent disputes.