Meeting of the minds

Meeting of the minds (also referred to as mutual agreement, mutual assent or consensus ad idem) is a phrase in contract law used to describe the intentions of the parties forming the contract. In particular it refers to the situation where there is a common understanding in the formation of the contract. Formation of a contract is initiated with a proposal or offer. This condition or element is often considered a requirement to the formation of a contract.

Richard Austen-Baker has suggested that the perpetuation of the idea of 'meeting of minds' may come from a misunderstanding of the Latin term consensus ad idem, which actually means 'agreement to the [same] thing'. There must be evidence that the parties had each, from an objective perspective, engaged in conduct manifesting their , and a contract will be formed when the parties have met such a requirement.

German jurist, Friedrich Carl von Savigny is usually credited with developing the will theory of contract in his work System des heutigen Römischen Rechts (1840).

Sir Frederick Pollock is one person known for expounding the idea of a contract based on a meeting of minds, at which time it gained much support in the courts.

Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 1897 that a meeting of minds was really a fiction.

The English contracts scholar Richard Austen-Baker has suggested that the perpetuation of the concept into current times is based on a confusion of it with the concept of a consensus ad idem ("agreement to the [same] thing") which is an undoubted requirement of synallagmatic contracting, and that this confusion may be the result of recent ignorance of Latin.

In Household Fire and Carriage Accident Insurance Co Ltd v Grant (1879) 4 Ex D 216, Thesiger LJ said, in the course of a judgment on the postal rule,

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