The Statute of Frauds is where a perfectly good contract can die on a technicality — and where your professor loves to catch you. It says that certain kinds of contracts, no matter how real the deal, cannot be enforced unless there's a signed writing to prove them. On the exam it almost never appears alone: you spot a valid offer, acceptance, and consideration, and then the fact pattern quietly tells you the deal was oral, or was for land, or couldn't be performed within a year. That's your cue. This page gives you the rule, the six categories cold, how courts apply each one, the exceptions that rescue an oral contract, and the exact trap 1Ls fall into.

The Statute of Frauds requires certain categories of contracts to be evidenced by a signed writing to be enforceable. The classic categories, remembered by the mnemonic MY LEGS, are contracts in consideration of Marriage, contracts that cannot be performed within one Year, contracts for the transfer of an interest in Land, promises by an Executor to pay estate debts from personal funds, contracts for the sale of Goods worth $500 or more (UCC § 2-201), and Suretyship promises to answer for another's debt. A contract inside one of these categories that lacks a sufficient writing is unenforceable — but the Statute is a defense to enforcement, not a rule that voids the deal.