Imagine a 17-year-old walks into a shop, buys something and later refuses to pay for it.
“I’m a minor,” they say. “The contract isn’t binding on me.”
Sounds like the end of the story, right?
Not quite.
The law does give minors protection when it comes to contracts. But that protection is not a licence to walk away from every obligation simply because you are young.
In Ghana, the general statutory rule on contractual capacity is that a person who is 21 years or above has capacity to contract, subject to the other requirements set out in the Contracts Act.
But even where a person lacks contractual capacity, the law recognises that there are situations where it would be unfair or impractical to leave the other party completely without protection.
One of the clearest examples is necessaries.
Necessaries are goods suitable to the person’s circumstances and actual requirements at the time they are supplied. Under Ghana’s Sale of Goods Act, where necessaries are supplied to a person whose agreement is void because of incapacity, that person is required to pay a reasonable price for them.
Think about food.
Clothing.
Accommodation.
Medical treatment.
Things a person genuinely needs to live or function.
The law is not going to say, “Well, you were a minor, so you can keep everything and pay nothing.”
That principle can be seen in Chapple v Cooper, where a minor was held liable for the reasonable cost of a coffin purchased for her deceased husband because it was treated as a necessary.
But there is an important catch.
Not everything a minor buys becomes a necessary simply because they bought it.
That was the problem in Nash v Inman.
A tailor supplied waistcoats to a minor and tried to recover the price. The court found that the waistcoats were not necessaries because the minor was already adequately supplied with clothing.
And this distinction is important.
Imagine a teenager already has ten perfectly good pairs of sneakers and then buys another expensive pair.
It would be difficult to argue that the eleventh pair was something they needed simply because they happened to want it.
The law looks at the person’s actual circumstances and requirements.
And I think this is where the rules become quite sensible.
The law is trying to strike a balance.
On one hand, minors may be more vulnerable to entering contracts they do not fully understand. Giving them some protection makes sense.
On the other hand, society cannot function if every transaction involving a young person can simply be undone by saying, “I’m a minor.”
If a young person genuinely needs medical treatment, food or clothing, the person supplying those things should not necessarily be left without payment.
There are other exceptions too.
A minor may be bound by certain beneficial contracts of service, such as employment, apprenticeship or training arrangements, where the contract is substantially for the minor’s benefit. The courts have also been willing to reject agreements that are excessively harsh or unreasonable towards a minor.
That distinction tells us something important about the purpose of the law.
The law is not necessarily saying:
“Minors cannot enter contracts.”
It is closer to saying:
“We need to be careful about the kinds of contracts we hold minors to.”
And perhaps that is the more reasonable approach.
After all, a 17-year-old who buys a textbook needed for school is in a very different position from a 17-year-old who signs an unusually harsh commercial agreement.
Treating both situations exactly the same would make little sense.
So, can a minor be made to pay for something they bought?
Sometimes.
The answer depends on what was bought, whether it was genuinely necessary, the circumstances surrounding the transaction and the nature of the contract.
Which brings us back to the original question:
Too young to make a contract, but old enough to pay?
The law’s answer is essentially: it depends.
And that may be the point.
The law protects minors, but it does not necessarily protect them from every consequence of every decision they make.