Also known as: present intents · present intention
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A mental state in which a person intends an act to have immediate legal effect at the moment it occurs.
Pulse Media offers an online service agreement to small businesses. Parker Phillips, owner of a startup, reads the terms on the final screen and clicks I Agree without typing a name. The platform activates the service. When Parker later refuses payment claiming the agreement was unsigned, the click satisfies the present-intent requirement because it logically associates an electronic process with the record at the moment Parker chose to proceed.
Phoebe Park and Philip Powell lived together for years. Phoebe alleges they repeatedly declared their present intent to be husband and wife and thereafter held themselves out as married. After the relationship ends, Phoebe seeks recognition of a common-law marriage. The court examines whether the declarations reflected an immediate intention to assume marital status rather than a mere promise of future formalization.
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Texaco holds dormant mineral interests. The state statute provides that retention of those interests is conditioned on performing specified actions that demonstrate a present intention to keep the rights. When Texaco fails to act, the interests lapse. The Court upholds the statute because the state may require affirmative steps showing current intent to retain the property interest.
A person signs a record when, with present intent to authenticate or adopt it, the person attaches or logically associates an electronic symbol, sound, or process with the record. Clicking I Agree after reviewing terms meets this standard because the act occurs at the moment the user intends to be bound.
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Delivery requires the grantor to have a present intent that the deed immediately transfer title. Statements indicating the transfer will occur only upon a future event, such as death or recording, show the absence of that intent and prevent delivery.
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No. The misrepresentation must concern a past or existing fact. A promise of future performance, even when made without present intent to perform, does not constitute the required misrepresentation at common law.
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Yes. Selecting a stored signature on an electronic platform constitutes an electronic process logically associated with the record when performed with the intent to authenticate the agreement at that moment.
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…to the common law, will still be a valid marriage.” (70 Ill. 484, 486.) This court held that if the parties declared their present intent to take each other as husband and wife and thereafter did so a valid common law marriage existed. (Cartwright v. McGown (1887), 121 Ill. 388, 398.) Such marriages were legislatively…