Une superstition juridique

This morning husband and I went to sign some something or other for the house we successfully bid on this week. Mr. Real Estate Agent Man read us the whole thing, explaining as he went various real estatey kind of information, including that we agree to buy the house in it's current state knowing that it may indeed have some hidden vices. Des vices cachées. Do you think it smokes or drinks or has too much sex?

Anyway, after having listening ohsoattentively to MREAM do his job, he asked us to sign the long document. And he asked us to write, to the left of our signature, lu et approuvé - bon pour accord. Which literally means, 'read and approuved - good for agreement'.

I am a lawyer's wife. I've learned a few things about the law over the years. One of the things I've learned is that the above formula has absolutely no legal value. The document is valid because of the signature and that's it. I mentioned this fact to MREAM and Husband confirmed what Miss Smarty Pants (that's me, in case you're not following) had said. And then Husband gave it's name. It's called superstition juridique. A judicial superstition. No legal value but apparently a lot of effect on the psychological state of involved parties.

Let me illustrate.

At the CCI (one of the places I'll be working - by the way, I managed to keep a few hours and good graces despite it all), I have to sign a work contract for each client's account. This week I had two new 20 hour contracts to sign. Which I did. On each is the request to precede signatures with the aforementioned formula. Which I did not do, because, why waste the ink. And it's a lot of words for nothing. No one on site noticed and the contracts were sent to HQ. And were sent back. Because I didn't put the good for agreement bs on there. The HQ administrators are evidently a psychologically fragile bunch. So I scribbled 'bite me, losers' to the left of my signature and gave them back. Superstitions graciously respected, they were accepted, of course.