What is a deal but a contract? - and if I remember a tiny bit of my fancy private-school legal education, a contract can be declared null and void if there is a lack of consideration. So (or therefore in a legal document) if someone is inconsiderate to me, the deal is off. Any deal. And by inconsiderate I mean like for instance if someone borrowed something from me and never returned it. That's just flat out inconsiderate. A deal breaker. Legally. Look at the case law. Once, in the dreary Olde English countryside, a woman made a deal to give two of her family's cows to her neighbor in exchange for a discrete poison with which to murder her husband. The poison was delivered, the husband died and the cows were handed over. Unfortunately, the neighbor let the cows run rampant, would not fence them in and they moseyed back to their old home (mostly out of habit, as cows do). Well, this ticked the lady off. She wasn't fond of cows in the first place - that's why she was eager to make a deal regarding them - and now they were back, trampling her pretty rosebushes. She went to the neighbor and asked him to keep the cows fenced and he said sure, right-o. Well, two weeks later, the cows were back. The neighbor never built a fence and when pressed on the issue, admitted that he had no intention of doing so. Inconsiderate to say the least. Therefore (legal jargon again), the woman built her own fence and kept the cows for herself after all. she also returned what was left of the poison she had received. She dissolved it in a bottle of milk from those very cows and served it to her neighbor in his tea.
She was promptly hanged, it's true, but it is important to note in the court's findings that when they hanged her, it was for murder and not for breach of contract.
