Mention circumstances in which contract by minor is: (i) void, (ii) voidable or (iii) valid.

The law does not treat all transactions involving a minor in a uniform manner. While the foundational rule — established conclusively by the Privy Council in Mohori Bibee v. Dharmodas Ghose (1903 ILR 30 Cal 539) — is that a minor's agreement is void ab initio, there are situations where a transaction to which a minor is a party may be voidable at his option, or even perfectly valid and enforceable. A systematic understanding of these three categories is essential before any examination of minor's contracts can be called complete.

I. When the Minor's Agreement is Void

The general rule admits of no ambiguity. A minor is not competent to contract under Section 11, and any purported agreement entered into by him is a nullity from its very inception. This means, as the Privy Council declared in Mohori Bibee, that there never was and never could have been any contract. Several practical consequences flow from this position.

• An agreement entered into directly by the minor himself — whether for a mortgage, a sale, a loan, or any ordinary commercial transaction — is void. No decree can be passed against him, either personally or against his property, on such a transaction. In the Mohori Bibee case itself, the mortgage executed by the minor Dharmodas Ghose was declared void, and the money-lender was denied any claim either on the mortgage or under Sections 64 and 65 of the Contract Act, both of which operate only where a contract between competent parties exists.

• A minor cannot appoint an agent. Section 183 of the Contract Act expressly requires that the principal must be competent to contract. A minor's principal himself being incapable, any agency he purports to create is equally void. Whatever a person cannot do personally, he cannot do through an agent either — and a minor cannot personally contract at all.

• A contract entered into on behalf of a minor by a self-appointed guardian, one who has no legal authority to so act, is equally void and does not bind the minor. Even where the self-appointed guardian is the mother, who under the personal law is not the legal guardian, the transaction entered into by her without authority cannot bind the minor.

• A contract for the purchase of immovable property by a legal guardian acting on behalf of a minor, but not authorised to do so, was held void by the Privy Council in Mir Sarwarjan v. Fakhruddin Mohd. Chowdhury (1912 39 Cal 232). The minor's guardian had contracted to purchase immovable property on the minor's behalf, and the minor sued for specific performance. The Privy Council held that neither the manager of the minor's estate nor the guardian could bind the minor or the minor's estate by a contract for the purchase of immovable property. The minor's suit for specific performance was accordingly dismissed.

II. When the Minor's Agreement is Voidable

There are significant situations where the transaction is not void ab initio but is merely voidable at the option of the minor. This category is distinct in one crucial respect: the transaction is initially valid and effective, and only becomes void if the minor chooses to avoid it.

• Contracts made by the legal guardian for the benefit of the minor are not void but voidable. Section 8 of the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956, confers on the natural guardian the power to do all acts necessary or reasonable and proper for the benefit of the minor or for the benefit of the minor's estate. Such a contract, when made within the competence of the guardian and genuinely for the minor's benefit, is valid and binding on the minor. However, the minor retains the right to avoid it on attaining majority — and if he exercises that right, avoidance relates back to the date of the original transaction, as if it had never taken place at all.

• Alienation of immovable property by the natural guardian in contravention of Sections 8(2) and (3) of the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956 — that is, without the prior permission of the court — is expressly made voidable at the option of the minor. The court had so held well before the 1956 Act gave it statutory recognition, and the principle had been applied under Section 29 of the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890 as well. In Sinaya Pillai v. Munisami Ayyan (1898 22 Mad 289), a mortgage executed by the guardian of a minor appointed under the Guardians and Wards Act without obtaining the sanction of the court was held voidable, and the minor could avoid it only on restoring to the mortgagee the benefit received by the minor's estate under the mortgage. The principle here is that the law will not allow the minor to avoid the transaction while retaining its fruits — equity steps in to require restitution of benefit as a condition of avoidance. Similarly, a minor challenging the transfer of immovable property through his natural guardian in contravention of the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act must bring his suit within three years of attaining majority under Article 60 of the Limitation Act, 1963.

• Compromise of a suit to which a minor is a party, when made a decree of the court, also occupies this voidable zone. Although an agreement by a minor is void, a compromise which has been made a court decree is not void but voidable. Where the minor desires to enforce it, it is not open to the defendant to raise the plea that the compromise was void on the ground that the guardian did not obtain the sanction of the court, since a decree stands until set aside by due process.

III. When the Minor's Agreement is Valid

The rule that a minor cannot incur obligations does not prevent the law from recognising that he may acquire rights and enforce contracts made in his favour. A minor is regarded as incapable of giving, but not of receiving. Several categories of transactions involving minors are, accordingly, fully valid and enforceable.

• Contracts of necessaries represent the oldest and most important category. Section 68 of the Contract Act provides that where necessaries suited to the condition of life of a minor are supplied to him, the supplier is entitled to be reimbursed from the minor's property. This is not a contractual obligation in the ordinary sense — the minor incurs no personal liability and cannot be sued. The liability is purely quasi-contractual in nature, imposed by the law regardless of the minor's consent, and runs against the minor's estate alone. Necessaries are not synonymous with bare necessities. They include everything necessary to maintain the minor in the station of life in which he moves — the supply of cloth, good education and instruction, money for household expenses, and costs of litigation to protect his property or liberty have all been recognised as necessaries. In Sham Charan Mal v. Choudhry Debya Singh (1894 ILR 21 Cal 872), money advanced for the defence of a minor facing criminal prosecution was held to be a necessary, the court observing that the liberty of the minor being at stake, the advance must be treated as having been made for necessaries.

• Contracts where the minor is the promisee — that is, where the contract is entirely in his favour — are valid and enforceable by him. There is nothing in the Contract Act that prevents a minor from being a promisee, or from acquiring title to anything valuable. In Raghava Chariar v. Srinivasa (AIR 1917 Mad 630 FB), a Full Bench of the Madras High Court held that a mortgage executed in favour of a minor who had advanced the whole of the mortgage money was enforceable by him or on his behalf. A minor can sue upon a promissory note or a bond executed in his favour. He is entitled to purchase immovable property and sue for recovery of possession. A gift made in his favour is valid, and there is a presumption of acceptance on his behalf, as the Supreme Court confirmed in K. Balakrishnan v. K. Kamalam (AIR 2004 SC 1257), where a gift by a mother to her minor son was held binding on her and irrevocable after the minor had retained the benefit without repudiation on attaining majority.

• Contracts for the benefit of the minor entered into by a competent guardian within the scope of the guardian's authority are valid and binding. The Privy Council itself recognised an exception to its earlier categorical position in Srikakulam Subrahmanyam v. Kurra Subba Rao (AIR 1948 PC 95), where it held that the transfer of the inherited property of a minor effected by his guardian to pay off an inherited debt was binding on him as it was genuinely for his benefit. A guardian acting within the scope of his powers under the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act or the Guardians and Wards Act, and contracting with the sanction of the court for the benefit of the minor's estate, creates a valid obligation binding on the minor's estate — though, as noted, never a personal obligation on the minor himself.

• Contracts of apprenticeship and beneficial service have also been recognised as valid. The Indian Apprentices Act, 1850 provides for contracts of apprenticeship that bind minors. The governing principle, drawn from the English decision in Roberts v. Gray (1913 1 KB 520), is that a contract is binding on the minor if it is for his good education or instruction whereby he may profit himself afterwards. It was suggested, however, in the Bombay High Court's decision in Raj Rani v. Prem Adib (AIR 1949 Bom 215), that even in such cases in India, the minor would not be personally liable — the liability, if any, would run against his estate under the framework of Section 68.

• Contracts of marriage represent a customary and socially entrenched category. It has become well established that while a contract for the marriage of a minor can be enforced against the other contracting party at the instance of the minor, it cannot be enforced against the minor himself. The minor retains the benefit of the contract while being shielded from its burdens — a pattern that consistently emerges across all three categories above. This principle, however, is now subject to statutory marriage laws, and a contract for the marriage of a minor in contravention of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 will not be enforceable.

The Underlying Thread

Across all three categories, one principle recurs with quiet consistency: the law protects the minor from obligation, never from right. He cannot be bound unless the law itself — through the mechanism of quasi-contract under Section 68, or through the agency of a competent guardian acting beneficially — so provides. But he is never disabled from receiving a benefit, enforcing a promise made in his favour, or taking advantage of a contract that asks nothing of him. As the law has developed since Mohori Bibee, this asymmetry has been refined but never reversed — it remains the cornerstone of a minor's position in contract law.