you can’t just scream legal tender and throw physical money at your creditor¹.

IIRC in the US it’s written simply that if you leave legal tender in the creditor’s possession, your debt is reduced by that amount regardless of what they do with it. But of course gathering evidence in that case can be dicey.

If I remember rightly you need to lodge it with the courts and then it basically prevents you from being sued as the money is there to pick up.

There was a guy in Germany who fought the forced use of electronic payment for radio licensing fees that way. He escrowed it in a blocked account so that the gov could not claim he was just looking to evade the fees. It seems like a good approach.

You’re probably right. But certainly I have seen laws that push back in situations where the party with the greatest amount of power and privilige subjects the other party to various factors outside of their control, where the law counters that to mitigate unfairness.

The GDPR exhibits this with a “fairness” clause, which the EDPB reflects on as follows:

None of that applies to my non-GDPR situation, but just an example of law that tries the shift burden of risks back onto the party with the most power. Labor law often has rules to protect workers from becoming subject to risks and factors outside of their control. In my case I need to look more at credit and debt laws, where the creditors tend to have disproportionate power. The UK’s legal tender law is one such tool to relieve debtors from the disempowerment of forced banking (which is weak where I am but there may be another mechanism).

took an action, namely leaving the country, of your own free will

It’s perhaps worth noting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights art.13:

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

That does not necessarily contradict anything you said, but I think it is a bit harsh for a creditor to make debtors choose between their human rights and satisfying their contractual obligations.

The post was composed with the understanding that different countries have different laws. It is not an attempt to practice UK law outside of the UK. It’s to get a general grasp on core legal theories and common practices and concepts.

For example, I learnt basics of contract law from Nolo. Nolo gives a good basic understanding of legal concepts and norms. Of course Nolo is not an all encompassing reference and does not cover variation from one jurisdiction to the next in detail. But I find that what I have learned from Nolo is very similar concepts span many different jurisdictions. You can imagine that if a law school were to only teach legal concepts that apply specifically in the location of the school, it would be a school of low standards, where lawyers could not easily adapt to other jurisdictions.

I don’t even know if the legal scenario at hand has a wild variation across jurisdictions. Some situations have more variation than others. I’m in the very early stages of trying to get a grasp on what question to ask. I don’t even speak the language of the laws that apply to me, so without even knowing the common concepts for the situation, searching for the relevant statutes is quite an undertaking. If there were some kind of latin jargon to describe the situation of being bound by the action of non-contracting actors, even that would help in finding my way to the precise statutes (or case law) that I need.

Talk to a lawyer, not us.

I qualify for a free lawyer since I have no income. But the agency that allocates pro bono lawyers has very narrow verification requirements (in short, I must have a certificate that proves I am in in the unemployment system). So because I am not in that system, I fall through the cracks. Which means I have to work pro se in this case.

I suspected that. It is interesting to know indeed. That is also the case in the US, where contracts cannot trump legal tender law.

But I believe I’m in a cash-unfriendly country where legal tender does not distinguish debts from points of sale and contracts trump law in this case, so I am still mainly interested in knowing the very general legal theories in contract law for situations where someone is bound by the actions of those not a party to the contract.

Another example: what if a contract required someone to obtain and maintain a mobile phone service, then later in the contract SIM registration is implemented and the obligated party cannot get service because their ID card is rejected or they don’t meet whatever KYC requirements? Hypothetical, but I am increasingly finding myself in situations where a supplier of some kind forces me to be served in some way by some other service.

Really seems off that I can be contractually obligated in a way that requires action by others. Fair enough if I have to make an effort to get served by a 3rd party, but when the effort fails I’m very annoyed that I might be accountable for the consequences.