Capacity to enter into a contract in german civil law (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Law - Civil / Private / Trade / Anti Trust Law / Business Law, grade: 1,7, University of Applied Sciences Essen, course: Business Law, language: English, abstract: The capacity to contract is a fundamental right that empowers a person to participate in everyday life. To protect certain groups of people from legal transaction that overreach and overexerts them, there a laws in the BGB that limit or deny their contracting capacity. However, sometimes there are cases in which the deficiencies to contract seem to have more disadvantages than advantages for a person. That can be the case in surrogate businesses or if it is not practicable to get the consent of a parent. Especially when it comes to children who are acting anonymously in the internet, it will be challenging in the future for retailers to deal with them. For example, 1 on July 28 in 208, the AG Berlin-Mitte ruled in favour of a father whose daughter had bought a subscription for ringtones without his consent. In this case, the provider "Jamba" was left empty-handed.2 In the light of digitalisation it has become more and more usual to make subscription based contracts not only for hardware but for software as well. Software like photoshop or even office software can be licensed and subscription based. Since those kinds of contracts are not included in the pocket money section, it may become hard for retailers to directly contract with minors without asking for the consent of their parents that would have to reach them directly, which can be rather unpractical.