Legal Question in Administrative Law in California

Re: Contracts

To start off, the general law of contracts imposes no requirement for an address of any kind. It is usually held necessary that a valid written contract must identify the parties, show a consideration on both sides, and more or less identify the subject matter. That's about it. Contracts that don't even specify the price can be enforced; the courts will infer that the parties intended "a reasonable price" or "market price" in many (but not all) cases.

Now, the rules of the Contractors' State License Board, or the practices of a particular trade, may require a lot more specifics, possibly including a street address, but this is somewhat unusual and has to be considered an exception to the general law of contracts. I practice law using a post office box number on all my papers filed in court and on much of my business correspondence. I do provide a street address as well, primarily for UPS and FedEx type deliveries.

Your question is unclear in that I don't know what you mean by "physical mailbox." A post office box is a "physical mailbox" to my way of thinking, because it exists in three-dimensional reality, as opposed to a virtual or electronic mailbox for e-mail at Yahoo or MSN.

The next question is whose "permission" were you thinking was required? The other party's? Some court's, where a future suit might be tried? The CSLB's? I don't get the question.

I'd say as a general rule, you should be sure the other parties to the contract are OK with the mail address you give, and that mail addressed there will be delivered to you with a high degree of certainty.

As a final note, there are situations in which a street address rather than a post office or other (private) mailbox address MUST be given. For example, a fictitious business name registration, or any listing of a registered agent for service of process. Street addresses are also necessary to assure the delivery of mail and packages sent by private carrier such as UPS and FedEx.