No contract or other legal agreement should be required to contain a specific exemption, disclaimer or other such language designed to protect any party against lying, fraud, and misrepresentation or any other wrong or illegal activity or action by another party. Lying or being dishonest should be assumed to be wrong and illegal. It should be understood that any such activity that has occurred within a contract would automatically nullify all relevant portions of that contract.

Understood Confidentiality Agreement Exceptions

In addition, any person, including lawyers, reporters, etc., entering into contracts, confidentiality agreements or any other types of legal or similar agreements, should be allowed and have the right, even mandated, to break those agreements and be required to disclose to the proper authorities any information protected within such agreements that would likely be significantly helpful in determining the degree to which crime, fraud, or any other types of illegal activity is, has, or likely will occur in any place or at any time in the future. Contractually bound people who reveal such information should be immune from any punishments specified in the contract.

Incontestability Clauses

Things such as incontestability clauses should be illegal.

It should be illegal for businesses to require customers to do anything in order to remain or become a nonparty to a transaction once their original involvement in the previous transaction agreement ends. An automatic renewal of a subscription to a magazine, or an automatic shipment of another month’s supply of a product, or any continuation or extension of an economic relationship beyond the terms of the original transaction agreement should all be illegal unless the customer expressly authorized such an arrangement. The terms of an original transaction cannot automatically require customers to contact the company to notify them of the customer’s unwillingness to exceed the terms of the original transaction.

In addition, it should be illegal for street number painters to leave a notice at a residence instructing the residents that their address number will be repainted unless the residents take it upon themselves to tape the notice over the numbers to indicate that they do not want their numbers repainted. The correct way is to require residents who want their numbers painted to go out and indicate as such.

‘Honesty contracts’ or ‘honesty clauses’ within contracts should be developed (or just assumed to be integral elements within all contracts) and used to add assurances to each signator that all signators have arrived at and have agreed to the terms of the contract with integrity and candor. Such an ‘honesty clause’ would also guarantee that no signatory has engaged in lying, cheating, or is otherwise misrepresenting any contractually relevant item to any other signatory party. If it is found that a party has lied or misrepresented any element within a contract, those relevant portions of that contract should be null and void. Furthermore, criminal charges should be levied against any party found responsible for such contractual misbehaviors which resulted in actual damages or losses to another party.

An example of how such an ‘honesty contract’ or ‘honesty clause’ would work would be as follows. If a person wants to sell a piece of antique furniture, but does not know anything about the price of that piece of furniture, he could go find a store interested in buying that piece of furniture. The seller would ask the potential buyer (store) what the estimated market price is for such a piece of furniture (to within about 25%). They could then come to an agreement to engage in the transaction at such a price. If, at any time after the sale, the seller found out that the true market price at the time of sale was significantly higher than what the buyer told him, the buyer would be treated as if he stole the difference from the sell and would be fined up to several times this difference. If the true cost was significantly lower, and the seller knew it, the seller would be fined up to several times the difference. Such ‘honesty clauses’ could be applied to virtually every type of business transaction, including becoming a common feature of receipts.

Companies, business, etc. that promise either limited time or lifetime guarantees or warranties for their services or products should be required, themselves, to purchase some type of insurance to insure that their promised guarantees or warrantees are kept and valid. This way, if the entity promising the guarantee or warranty goes out of business or is otherwise unable to keep its promises, the customers would not be defrauded.

A high school graduation requirement should be for every student to prepare and maintain a legal document (such as a trust, will, etc.) that would specify what to do in the event that that individual suffers a medical emergency (how much life support to provide, etc.), and what to do with (how to disperse) that individual’s possessions (body, property, assets, money, etc.) after their death.  Any authorized person can review and change such documents whenever and as often as they would like.  Some government agency or healthcare provider should ensure that such documents are created, reviewed and resigned every 5 to 10 years.  Every person currently 50 and older should also be required to complete these documents.