I deal with a lot of people who are in conflict over an agreement that they have with some one else. It can be a business agreement, a relationship issue or even what essentially is a barter agreement is. The common factor I see is that they each believe that they have agreed to something but in fact they each misunderstood what they had agreed to.
A recent example was a verbal agreement between two guys who had agreed to exchange work on dry walling a house in exchange for repair to a work truck. It would have worked out except the after the dry wall work was done the fellow kept adding to the repair work, first his truck and then his wife’s car. After some 18 months the deal fell apart when the otherparty decided “enough is enough”.
That’s when I got called into the fray, trying to get both parties to agree that there has to be a limit to work performed under a verbal understanding that had no termination. All of which illustrates my point that whenever you agree to do something for or with another party you need to reflect your understanding of what was said with a written document. It doesn’t have to be a formal contract…it can be as simple as a note stating your understanding of the situation and what you believe you have agreed to do.
By reflecting your thoughts in writing you reduce confusion and formalize wour thoughts and in the long run reduce your chances that you will have to sit down with a mediator or stand before a judge attempting to explain why you got into the position of neither party knowing what the other party understood the agreement to be.
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