terminate the contract under circumstances that are dictated within the contract (which may
include non-consensual abuse or neglect, or repeated violations of limits). If there is a safeword
that the submissive can use to end the contract, it is included here.
Signature of all Parties
The act of signing the contract formalizes the existence of the relationship. Additionally, some
contracts may include the signatures of one or two witnesses.
BDSM contracts and the law
BDSM Contracts may not be binding in the United States, but may serve as evidence of the parties’ knowledge/intent, awareness and waiver of risks, and more, in courts of law.[2] For example,
if a contract specifically states what a dominant has consent to do, and/or that a dominant may
not permanently disfigure or scarify the submissive, it would allow a jury to differentiate between the acts which have been consented to and the disfigurement/scarification which have not,
and impose a judgment accordingly.
Per one attorney specializing in BDSM issues, “consent” is a legitimate defense to assault in
“most places”[2] but, given the legal precedent of the U.K.’s Operation Spanner case, consent
might not be a valid defence in the United Kingdom (but the U.K.’s case law after Operation
Spanner is unclear, and exonerations may occur possibly depending on the specific “extreme
sex” act, whether injury was due to recklessness [exonerations occurred] or “unpredictably
dangerous” [conviction occurred as this phrase was used by a judge to describe the sexual activity], or even whether the participants are married or at least heterosexual[3]. In the U.K., even
the one who consented to BDSM activities has been convicted for aiding and abetting in the
“assault” upon himself in one homosexual case,[2] but in other (heterosexual) cases, the alleged
victims were not even arrested for consenting to the “assaults”.[4]
In areas of the world where BDSM activities are illegal, contracts brought to light can be used to
prosecute those involved in the BDSM lifestyle. In some countries consent is not a defense to assault, and a BDSM contract which gives consent may not protect a dominant from being charged
with criminal activity.