Peppercorn (law)
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
However, a bare promise, with no consideration flowing in the opposite direction, can still be legally enforced under the doctrine of "reliance". The details vary by state, but the basic concept is that if one party makes a promise and the other party reasonably relies on that promise to its detriment (i.e., buys raw materials to build something for the promising party), then the promise can be enforced. This doctrine is known as "promissory estoppel" or simply "section 90 reliance".
1: https://opencasebook.org/casebooks/3665-contracts/resources/...
Suppose in 2017 I promised you can graze your sheep on my field. Today, desiring to now keep cattle, I tell you that from next spring (so 2024) I'll have cows on this land, so you'll need to find somewhere else for your sheep.
Courts won't buy the theory that I'm estopped. It was reasonable for you to rely on my promise yesterday, it'd be reasonable tomorrow - but a year after you received notice? Not going to fly.
And the problem with many Peppercorn contracts is that they're about super long term situations, such as long leases, where a 125 year period is normal even though that means the initial contracted parties - if human - will likely be long dead by the time the term ends even if it isn't extended. Thus, we need to ensure the law recognises that this is permanent, or at least, very long term.
For example, if I was offered a long term grazing contract in 2021 at favorable rates, and I passed on it because I was able to graze with you, I could claim that the 2021 act was reasonable reliance and that if I have to pay more for a grazing contract now, I should be able to recover the difference.
Of course, the landowner would argue that it isn't reasonable to pass up on a deal on grazing without first checking with the landowner to make sure the deal was good for the foreseeable future. This would all come down to facts and circumstances (as all reasonableness determinations do), including the duration of the historical practice, whether anything material had changed since then, etc.
Is it better to have a contract? Absolutely. But as a seasoned lawyer will tell you, it's possible to kill a deal by papering it to death. A rancher might put it differently: don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
For the lender, the cost of lost business if some customer can't buy a home isn't a massive concern, and most likely unless that lender is particularly stubborn and others are not, that customer would get turned away everywhere, so the effect is that homes you can't get a mortgage for are less valuable or even outright unsaleable.
So it actually doesn't matter so much what you think as seller, or what I think as buyer, the most powerful sentiment is what third party lawyers working for the lenders think. If the lender (or their lawyers) don't like your promises, too bad, you can't make that work.
Maybe what wasn't clear is why homes come into it? The most common Peppercorn considerations are in Long Leases. A Long Lease might go like this, I own a plot of land somewhere, "Freehold" is the English term for this ownership. I obtain permission and I build a residential tower, with say forty dwellings inside it. That's one building, on one plot of land, but I need to sell it to forty separate buyers. Today there's a legal mechanism to do this, called Commonhold, but it's rarely used, however historically Commonhold didn't exist, so, if I own the plot of land, and the building, I would write leases for the dwellings inside the building with a long duration. Periods like 99 years, 125 years or even 999 years are often used. Then I sell those leases. As consideration the owner pays me one peppercorn per year, for the period, and I agree to let them live in my tower in exchange. This is called Leasehold ownership, for example somebody might pay £200 000 for a Long Lease on a modest two bedroom apartment in a nice area. These leases don't really (normally) "run out" because the law requires that they can be extended for a reasonable fee, so in practice they're usually permanent.
Eg: This large park [1] is leased for a peppercorn a year to the city on the absolute proviso it be used as a park open to all otherwise the lease is terminated and the park reverts back to the estate of the bequeathing family.
Now, there's a can of worms some years and generations down the track - should the usage alter (or the peppercorns fail to be delivered to the lawyers) the grand-grand-grand children will be bunfighting over some serious now near inner city real estate.
To the best of my recollection none of those thousand year (less one) leases have run out to date.
IANAL but maybe you aren't either, and the discussion of reliance that you link to does not mean the other elements of the contract don't need to also be in place unless you specifically know otherwise.
IANAL but the "doctrine of reliance" is not a doctrine on its own afaik, it's one of the three elements of a valid contract.
With all the debt, rent and... payroll.
In North America, the main places where the civil law system is in use for these types of matters are the Canadian province of Quebec, the US state of Louisiana, and Mexico. Worldwide, the predominant system varies by geography, but the civil law system is actually more prevalent globally than the common law system.
An agreement isn't binding unless both sides get something. The "peppercorn" is the legal minimum, but this is still the reason, for instance, that saying "yes I promise to do X" doesn't by itself create contracts all over the place. A trade, even if it's only nominal, must take place.
The law school case demonstrating this is Hamer v. Sidway: https://matthewminer.name/law/briefs/1L/1st+Semester/LAW+505...
There, an uncle promised to pay his nephew the equivalent of $170,000 if his nephew promised to not drink, smoke, or play cards or billiards, and the court upheld the contract.
The evidentiary privilege also generally applies in situations where a person is consulting with an attorney and reasonably believes the information exchanged in the consultation is confidential. So in the Breaking Bad episode, Saul didn't really need the dollar to magically "seal" the conversation and have it be treated as confidential.
Interestingly, confidentiality (returning to the ethical rule, as distinguished from the evidentiary privilege) *may* be waived by an attorney to prevent reasonably certain loss of life or substantial bodily harm. Note, the attorney *may* choose to waive confidentiality -- but is not required to!
Same thing with Saul and Walter. Up until that point, they were speaking as hostage and kidnapper. So to distinguish the change in the relationship, he takes a nominal fee. Now they are a lawyer and his clients.
He may have needed it to persuade his clients that the conversation had been magically sealed.