Also known as: duresses · duressed · duressing · duressor · duressors
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
Conduct involving physical compulsion or improper threats that overcomes a party's free will and renders a manifestation of assent ineffective or an agreement voidable.
Mortgagor Dwight Dorsey faced foreclosure on his ranch after missing payments to Desert Oil. The lender's agent threatened immediate seizure of equipment and personal assets unless Dorsey signed a deed transferring the property outright. Dorsey executed the deed but later challenged it, claiming the transfer lacked voluntariness because the threats left him no reasonable alternative.
Attorney Dorothy Daniels approached a recent accident victim at the hospital and warned that failure to retain her firm immediately would result in loss of any recovery because other lawyers would mishandle the case. The target felt trapped into signing a retainer and later complained that the contact constituted improper solicitation.
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Sales manager Lee seized Bianca's wrist at the dealership and pressed her hand onto the signature line of a purchase agreement after she had stated she needed more time. Bianca verbally protested throughout the act. The resulting document could not serve as a manifestation of assent because the physical compulsion eliminated any voluntary choice.
Testator Devon Drake signed a new will leaving his estate to a neighbor after the neighbor threatened to publicize damaging personal information unless the change was made immediately. The neighbor's threat of a wrongful act coerced the execution, rendering the donative transfer invalid to that extent.
Days before the wedding, one fiancé threatened to cancel the ceremony and publicly humiliate the other unless a premarital agreement waiving all marital property rights was signed at once. The threatened party had no independent counsel and no realistic alternative given the imminent event, making consent involuntary.
After a testator's death, a disinherited child petitioned to set aside the will, asserting that a caregiver had threatened to withhold medical care unless the estate plan was altered in the caregiver's favor. The contestant bore the burden of proving duress to overcome the will's prima facie validity.
Physical compulsion that forces a signature without any intent to assent prevents formation of a contract altogether because no effective manifestation of assent occurs.
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The contestant must show that a wrongful threat or act by the wrongdoer coerced the testator into making a donative transfer the testator would not otherwise have made.
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A threat of civil process is improper only when made in bad faith, such as when the claimant knows the underlying claim lacks any factual basis yet uses it solely to extract contractual concessions.
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Mere economic disparity or insistence on an agreement as a condition of marriage does not constitute duress. The pressure must overcome free will through improper threats leaving no reasonable alternative.
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…for a spell of several hours pausing only for the subject's necessities in acknowledgment of the need to avoid a charge of duress that can be technically substantiated. In a serious case, the interrogation may continue for days, with the required intervals for food and sleep, but with no respite from the atmosphere of…