Dakota Fanning was a guest on George Lopez’s show, Lopez Tonight, on Monday, March 22, 2010. During the interview she told Lopez that when she was 11, she and her sister had signed contracts with her mom stating, “I will not ever get a tattoo….” To date, it seems she has not gotten one, although she is still only 17 and would likely have trouble getting one on her own at a licensed shop.
Although the tattoo she got during a commercial break on Lopez’s show was just drawn on and will wash off, there’s still a question as to whether it would have broken her contract if she had gotten a real tattoo.
As I have outlined in previous posts, a Contract requires an offer, acceptance, and consideration, and it is at least arguable that these conditions were met by the tattoo contract. In addition to those basic requirements, there are also practical considerations to make regarding the circumstances under which the contract was formed. A major factor is whether a person entering into a contract is legally competent to do so.
I covered legal competency briefly in an early post, but the type of competency at issue here regards the age of the person signing the contract. Typically, contracts cannot be entered into except by people who are at the age of majority (typically the age at which you can vote and get married). Sometimes this age limit is lowered if it seems like the person would have known what she was getting into and it was clear to her what the consequences of that agreement were. This depends on the situation, but I think it would be pretty difficult to argue that an 11 year-old has a great sense of long-term consequences. If Ms. Fanning was not legally competent to enter that contract, then she would not be held to it.
Another issue is that of coercion or duress (forcing a person to sign a contract): In a situation like this, where Dakota Fanning’s mother “made [her] sign a contract,” that is not really a contract that has been agreed to voluntarily. Defenses to contracts alleging coercion or duress typically need to be convincing, of course; the typical credit card agreement isn’t forcing anyone to sign up for it, so just claiming that it happened won’t help. In Ms. Fanning’s situation, however, there was a large power difference between her and her mother, and it is entirely conceivable that a parent could force a child to do something.
Given that Dakota Fanning was so young when she signed the no-tattoos contract, and that she states that she and her sister were forced to do it by her mother, it is pretty clear that this contract is void and unenforceable. Should this ever become a real issue for Dakota Fanning, she can probably just go ahead and do what she wants…once she’s 18.
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Graham Martin is a solo practitioner focusing on Contract law (including drafting, review, and litigation). He operates Martin Legal Services, LLC in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
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So, what consideration did she receive for this promise?
I knew someone was going to ask about that. Having not seen the entirety of the contract, I’m not positive, but it’s easy enough to think through and speculate.
In a formal contracting situation, we would want to see Dakota Fanning receive something like an allowance in return for agreeing not to get a tattoo. Of course, that’s not specified, and the presumption given the small amount of information we have is that Ms. Fanning’s consideration was not being harmed by her mother (not in a physical way, just in a way that would make Dakota’s young life less pleasant). And although that sounds coercive (and likely is), it is at least possible that it could still be construed as consideration.
I am sure that it has been argued before that withholding unpleasantness constitutes a benefit to another party, and can therefore be consideration for an agreement. Personally, though, on the face of it that seems much more like coercion than consideration to me.
So it’s likely that it’s not a contract on the grounds of lack of consideration as well.