## Facts

- A man executed a £600 bond in favor of a woman with whom he agreed to live outside marriage.
- The bond’s condition provided that he would supply her board, lodging, clothing, and a servant while they lived together.
- If he died during her lifetime or refused to live with her, he would pay her an annuity of £60 per year.
- The annuity and support obligations were conditioned on her continuing to live with him and not keeping company with another man; if she left him or associated with another man, he owed nothing.
- After the obligor’s death, the woman sued the administrator of the obligor’s estate in an action of debt on the bond.
- The administrator obtained oyer of the bond’s condition and pleaded the bond was void because it was founded on an unlawful consideration: an agreement to live together in fornication.
- The plaintiff replied that she had been seduced as a virgin and that the bond was intended as provision and compensation for her chastity.
- The defendant demurred to the replication, presenting the legal sufficiency of the consideration for decision.

## Issues

1. Whether a bond whose express terms condition support and an annuity on continued nonmarital cohabitation is void as founded on an illegal (immoral) consideration.
2. Whether a plaintiff can avoid the bond’s apparent illegality by pleading that the true purpose was compensation for seduction or provision for the woman.

## Decision

- The court held the bond void for illegality and entered judgment for the defendant administrator.
- The court treated the agreement as a bargain for continued illicit cohabitation, an unlawful consideration that the law will not enforce.
- The plaintiff’s attempt to recharacterize the bond as compensation for seduction did not cure the illegality because the unlawful consideration appeared on the face of the instrument.

## Legal Principles

- Contracts or bonds founded on an agreement for future nonmarital cohabitation (meretricious consideration) are illegal and void and will not be enforced.
- When illegality is apparent from the instrument itself, a party cannot salvage enforcement by pleading a different, allegedly lawful consideration inconsistent with the written terms.
- A claimant cannot recover where establishing the claim requires reliance on an illegal or immoral transaction.

## Conclusion

The court refused to enforce a bond that expressly tied financial support and a post-death annuity to continued nonmarital cohabitation, holding that illegality evident from the bond’s terms defeats enforcement notwithstanding allegations that the promise was meant as compensation for seduction.


Walker v. Perkins, 97 Eng. Rep. 985 (K.B. 1764)