Discharge of contract

You sign a two-year gym membership, pay in full, and in month eight the gym is shut by the municipal corporation for a safety violation. Or you agree to pay a friend Rs. 10,000 and, six months later, he says, “Forget it, give me Rs. 6,000 and we are done.” Or you book a hall for a wedding that the bride's family then cancels because she has fallen seriously ill. In each case the same question arises: are you still bound? A contract does not go on for ever. The law has a list of ways it can come to an end, and that list is what this topic is about.

In two minutes

To discharge a contract is to end the obligations it created, and the Indian Contract Act recognises several routes: performance, agreement of the parties (novation, rescission, alteration, remission), rescission of a voidable contract, supervening impossibility, and breach.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Law of Contract and Specific Relief on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.