In these cases you really do need a lawyer who you trust has read the documents and is protecting you.
1. Government and HOA stuff was not changing. I could accept it or walk.
2. Seller stuff could change. We made some minor requests and largely got them.
Reasoning:
We were spending 6 figures. The quality of my work would have a major impact on my family for a long time to come. I was newly married and this was my first family related big project. I was damn sure going to understand how interest rates and loans work ("whats a point?", "fixed vs float") and what legal junk we might be getting into.
I got a chance to learn a little about real estate. When life throws you a stack of legal documents, make lemonade.
I also got to vet out the agent. I work hard and have had some business success. I figured one day it would be time for another house and it would be nice to have a long term relationship with a trusted realtor on that one too.
Core point: it is your name on the document, it is a lot of money, it impacts your feature. Exactly how lazy are you to not read it?
I also would not trust my real estate agent explaining the contract to me. Just like you should never go with your real estate agent recommended house inspector. Your real estate agent may be the nicest person on earth, but they have a vested interest in the deal going through. It's prudent to find your own attorney and housing inspector who are not associated with each other.
Nobody really tells you these things unfortunately and it is scary as hell making that first house purchase!
The lawyer is a profession. His or her job is to read and review contracts, just like my job is to write code. Does your boss rewrite every line of code you write? When you take your car to a mechanic, do you insist on re-doing all of the repairs yourself? So why are you insisting on rereading contracts that your lawyer has already reviewed?
It's the same argument for both law and programming. Badly communicated requirements yield bad results.
I am not a lawyer. Suppose a rental car matter ended up court. I would rather not have to say to the judge, "I spent 10 minutes thoughtfully reading and evaluating the contract, and after careful consideration decided to accept the agreement." I would rather be able to say, "Gee, it was printed in gray ink in tiny type on the back of the paper, and they told me to just sign here on the front to get the car. I needed the car, so I did what they told me."
I never accept the "standard contract" when it comes to employment or consulting gigs - then I always read carefully, propose alterations, and often talk to my lawyer. But if it really is a "standard contract" signed by millions (including, presumably, lots of lawyers, too) then I am inclined to balance the risks and benefits and opt for ignorance over informed consent.
I definitely would not do that with a consulting contract. The chance that something weird would come up is generally worth it to get a good client.
Yes, it's legal and enforceable. Your signature is on the contract that you sign, not on some mythical un-marked-up copy.
In fact, this is often a good negotiating tactic: someone hands you a contract, and they just want to get it signed. You strike out the price and write in a new price (or whatever), initial it, sign it, and hand it back.
The psychic weight is now on them - they have a SIGNED CONTRACT and all they need to do is to sign it themselves.
Taking the conceptual step backwards from a contract (albeit only signed by one party) to a contract signed by NEITHER party is a bit hard to do.
In my experience, people and organizations often purposely make their contracts over-reaching just to be on the safe side, and expect savvy customers/partners to cross those overreaching items off.
Have you ever worked at a large company? Did this work?
I feel like at large companies, this would be like trying to modify the language of a car rental agreement, and the HR rep would just be confused.
Large company. East-coast based. Where non-competes are legal and common.
Working on the left coast, I demurred.
I got the left-coast version of the contract, no non-compete.
In other circumstances, I might request a substantial portion (up to or exceeding 100% of my salary, given that actual costs typically run 140-200% of salary) for the duration of any noncompete. Consideration.
In this particular case, when the property I was working for was divested (and riffed) some time later, I has fully unencumbered. Others had noncompetes, though these were not valid in that state. I'm not aware of any action being taken on the basis of that contract, but noncompetes can and have been enforced (notably recently between Microsoft and Google trading employees back and forth).
That said, this is precisely the sort of thing a labor union or professional guild would be in a very good position to make more acceptable standard boilerplate for.
When I bought a house (and later sold it), the day before, we had the title company forward all of the documents to our lawyer to review. When he gave his okay, I felt perfectly comfortable signing multiple documents that I never read.
For something like that, it's important to have someone with some knowledge go over things first. Was I really going to be in a position to slowly read over documents for 3 hours and potentially hold up closing just because I didn't understand a contract? No. So, it's best to let a lawyer do his/her job.
Probably a better use of time and money is to have them forward the documents to you, read over them the day before and ask a lawyer if you have any questions.
Buying a house is a bit different though, because you have the purchase agreement and then you have the contracts you sign at closing. We examined the purchase agreement in depth with our lawyer, since that is what sets the context for the rest of the transaction documents. However, once that was out of the way, there was no need for us to read anything - so long as our lawyer signed off on it.
It also depends on how much you trust your lawyer...
Right, which is why I suggested asking a lawyer if anything in the contract was unclear.
IMO, it seems like having the lawyer read it without reading it yourself is just deferring the decision to the lawyer. How can you convey to the lawyer what you're okay agreeing too, and what you would take issue with? What are you getting out of it above and beyond the "Everybody signs it, so it can't be too bad," approach?
What if, after signing the contract, you find out there's a clause you disagree with, but the lawyer tells you, "Oh, I didn't think you'd mind because that clause is in all of the contracts like this and everybody else is always okay with it."
Maybe it really just depends on how well a person knows and trusts their lawyer?
If it's a three page contract, and you don't have an existing relationship with the attorney, you'll probably just be charged a flat fee of a couple hundred bucks, or nothing, depending on what sort of other business you might bring in.
All relevant documents had been e-mailed to us beforehand but you still cannot ask them to skip the reading. Being too careful can be annoying too.
Further, at offer time, the realtor read aloud every contract and answered questions we had about them. I don't feel that they tried to pull the wool over my eyes at any point. Perhaps it's different with other realtors?
- spelled my name wrong - spelled the company name wrong - claimed that I was an electrician - listed my job title as 'oner'
None of these are terribly material errors, but they demonstrate just how frequently errors occur in financial documents. Frankly, it makes me queasy to imagine all the errors that could pop up in a mortgage document...
An obvious construction error. Just as one who plays piano isn't called a "pianoer", the account manager must have meant "onanist". Did you finally strike him in the face with your gloves?
But those are only a few pages. The rest of the documents you have to sign when closing a real estate purchase are mostly boilerplate disclosures about mold, asbestos, flood zones, penalties for fraud, etc ad nauseum. Anything that's actually important in the disclosures you'll already know about if you did your pre-purchase investigation properly. So there's no point in wasting time reading those disclosures in detail during the closing.
It's effective precisely because you don't expect it to be used as a weapon against you.
They said I was the first person to ever ask. :/