A promise is a transaction between two persons whereby the first person undertakes in the future to render some service or gift to the second person or devotes something valuable now and here to his use.

Types of promise

Both an oath and an affirmation can be a promise. One special kind of promise is the vow.

A notable type of promise is an election promise.

In Contract Law a promise is a manifestation of intention to act or refrain from acting in a specified way. It is so made as to justify a promisee in understanding that a commitment has been made. The person manifesting the intention is the promiser. The person to whom the manifestation is addressed is the promisee. Where Performance of the promise is assumed to benefit a person other than the promisee, that person is a beneficiary. But in contract law the word promise is commonly used to refer to promises which result in the promiser's word justifying expectations of performance from which a legal duty will arise in term of results. For instance A orally agrees to sell Land to B.This is an offer. B agrees to buy the Land and pays $1000 to A. This is an acceptance of the offer. If the land did not legally belong to A. This is a Fraud and B is legally expected to recover his $1000 By virtue of this indirect recognition of the duty to convey promise accurately, the agreement is a contract. If the promise is obviously misunderstood, the contract is void. Some say that the contract is a promise for a promise.

Examples of promises:

My friend promised to bake me cookies.

Conditional commitment

In loan guarantees, a commitment requires to meet an equity commitment, as well as other conditions, before the loan guarantee is closed.

Promises and religions

Religions have differing attitudes towards promises.

Christianity

main: Oath In Christianity, a distinction is made between simple promises and oaths/vows, with only the latter being seen as involving a deity (either as witness to the promise or recipient of it).

However, the Religious Society of Friends and the Mennonites object to the taking of both oaths and affirmations, basing their objections upon a commandment given in the Sermon on the Mount, and regard all promises to be witnessed by God.

Islam

In An-Nahl 91, God forbids Muslims to break their promises after they have confirmed them. All promises are regarded as having Allah as their witness and guarantor. In the Hadith, The Prophet states that a Muslim who made a promise and then saw a better thing to do, should do the better thing and then make an act of atonement for breaking the promise.¹

See also

• Asmachta