An elderly woman who signed contracts to transfer her rights in apartments as a gift to her daughter sought withdraw from it, even though the transfer of rights had been completed.
The Court accepted the motion due to the lack of contractual intent on the part of the elderly woman. While, similar to a standard contract, a gift contract is completed by an offer and acceptance which must meet the requirement of contractual intent, due to the fact that it is a one-sided contract, the grantor’s contractual intent is of a greater importance and it must be verified beyond any doubt that the grantor acted of his own free will and that there is no flaw that impairs his contractual intent. Here, it is a lonely elderly lady who was completely dependent on her daughter and the daughter took advantage of this dependency to pressure her mother into signing the gift contracts that deprived her of her property and left her homeless. Therefore, the gift contracts were unconscionable and in the absence of contractual intent to grant the gifts they are therefore void.