Quote of the Day

An “unbiased source” is a source we don’t understand well enough to perceive its bias.

Commenter "Anderson" at "Lawyers, Guns and Money" blog.

Incorporation by Reference

"The method of making one document of any kind become a part of another separate document by referring to the former in the latter, and declaring that the former shall be taken and considered as a part of the latter the same as if it were fully set out therein."

[Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, p.690.]

It is not uncommon for contracts to remain short and readable by ensuring that a great deal of the meat-and-potatoes clauses are found elsewhere; it is a good way of avoiding contracts that are unnecessarily long and detailed. The ones that most Canadians will be familiar with are "Standard Charge Terms" in a mortgage. The mortgage itself will only be a page or so -- of very fine print -- but it will have a box indicating which Standard Charge Terms apply; a "Standard Charge Terms" is the often massive document detailing each and every right and obligation under a mortgage: interest calculations, prepayment rights, power of sale, and so on.


NOTE:
PDFs of what appear to be all the currently used Standard Charge Terms have been very helpfully posted by the Orillia Law firm of Lewis Downey Tornosky Lassaline & Timpano, PC, and can be found here.