Word: contraction
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...What astute person," asks Ashley, "would consider it sensible to decide on an important business transaction while parked romantically beside a moonlit lake?" Because the answer is "practically everybody," Ashley suggests prenuptial contracts, agreements during marriage, separation treaties, post-marriage documents and agreements between lover-roommates of every conceivable gender. A premarriage contract, he suggests, might cover where the couple will live, who pays for what, how many children they will have. Cohabitants especially need legal agreements, he says, because the law has been slow to assist wronged partners in unconventional families...
Should love and affection be superseded by legal formalities? Ashley argues that a sensibly written contract strengthens a relationship by forcing partners to think problems out in advance. One woman, he reports, agreed to stop smoking but became so distraught when she tried it that her fiancé broke off the engagement. In that case, Ashley concludes, the contractual promises helped terminate a shaky match. And, he notes, the written word has coercive power: "There is a tendency to live up to a written promise?or at least to make a real effort to do so?when one might shrug...
There are some unexpected pitfalls on the road to contractual bliss. For example, most states still label homosexual acts as criminal, so a contract based on a homosexual relationship might be voided by the courts. The law also prohibits agreements that "facilitate" or "encourage" divorce, and any document listing property rights that either party will get in the event of divorce may do just that. Ashley counsels "skillful legal drafting," naturally done by a good lawyer, that refers to any eventual separation as the most loathsome" of all possible eventualities...
...indulgence in selfish point-grabbing by the pros spurted during the bidding war for talent between the N.B.A. and the American Basketball Association, which was absorbed by the older league in 1976. Agents negotiated longterm, no-cut contracts, and even so-so players got $200,000 or more a year. Admits Detroit's Center Bob Lanier, a team player himself: "Most people, and I'm one of them, get paid by the statistics they produce. A lot of guys have inflated values of their worth." In Boston, the egos got so big that the players forced the retirement of Coach...
...girlfriend Elizabeth lit out for L.A. To pay the rent, he played cocktail piano for half a year in a neighborhood bar called the Executive Room that advertised BILL MARTIN AT THE KEYBOARD. Joel emerged from this honky-tonk penance with a new wife (Elizabeth), a new contract from a major company (Columbia), and a new album whose title song, Piano Man, became a hit single...