CIVIL LEGAL AGREEMENT AS REGULATOR OF CIVIL LEGAL RELATIONS: DEFINITION, FORM AND FEATURES OF CONCLUSION

The article discusses the problems and ways of improving the concept of a civil contract, its essence and content. It is determined that the civil law agreement was studied over the years in the scientific works of civilists, but they did not reach a unified approach to the interpretation of this term. The significance of the contract as a universal means of regulating property relations, which ensures the achievement of the goals defined by its participants, is analyzed. The process of concluding an agreement, the stages through which the parties go through, coordinating the will and establishing civil rights and obligations, are considered. The offer (proposal to conclude an agreement) and the adoption of this proposal (acceptance) are considered in detail. Attention is drawn to the presence of «essential» conditions in contracts and to specific ways of concluding contracts: by silence or by specific actions. Also, in the article, the authors pay attention to the forms of civil contracts and to the problems of concluding written contracts in the context of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic. It is noted that electronic contracts are becoming widely spread and that there are different opinions among civilists regarding the form of such a contract: some believe that this is a written form, others that this is a separate independent form of a contract. The authors provide their own vision of the form of such an agreement, and also suggest amending the legislation to regulate this issue, in particular, amend the provision of Art. 205 of the Civil Code of Ukraine as follows: «Transactions may be made orally, in writing or electronically. The parties are entitled to choose any form of transaction, unless otherwise provided by law».