Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Virginia

Re: a ratified sales contract

It is not necessary to have all the pages initialed by anyone. However, if there were a dispute about whether one of the pages was changed or was part of the original contract, then the initials would help prove that the entire contract as a whole is one unit.

The idea of a "ratified" contract means that AFTER discovering a problem, the parties treat it as legitimate anyway.

So if I found out that there was something wrong with teh contract, but I did not want to cancel it, I could choose to continue with the contract. I would ratify the contract either explicitly or by simply ignoring the problem and treating it as legitimate.

Really, it is the same thing as WAIVING any defect in the contract. The person who might have a right to cancel or object to the contract chooses not to do so. They want to continue with the contract.

Sometimes of course they treat it as a legitimate contract for a period of time AND THEN LATER change their mind.

It might be that by not promptly objecting, but treating the contract as legitimate, the person has WAIVED the defects (ratified the contract) by treating it as legitimate, and it is now too late to object or cancel it. That is, too late to change directions.

There is no precise formula for this, but it would be based on how significant the actions were treating the contract as legitimate.

Re: a ratified sales contract

Yes, the lack of the seller's initials on each and every page of this sales contract would be unlikely to invalidate it nor indicate that it somehow was not accepted and agreed to (ratified) by the parties

to the contract.