The horse sale contract: what belongs in it

I am not a lawyer and I do not give legal advice. I am a horse owner who has run her own deals and runs other people's, and I know which clauses cost money later.

The form of the contract and what counts as valid at all depend on the country of the sale. A Spanish contract and a German one are built differently. Everything below is what has to be agreed and checked; the text itself should be read by a lawyer where you are buying.

Why a written contract when there is a receipt

A receipt answers one question: the money changed hands. The contract answers everything else.

A horse is a living commodity, and weeks pass between "we agreed" and "he is standing in my box". In that time it can fall ill, injure itself or fail the vetting. Who pays is a matter of contract, not of goodwill.

A verbal agreement stops working at the exact moment something goes wrong. Until then it looks entirely sufficient.

Identifying the horse

The dullest section and the most important. The horse has to be described so that it cannot be swapped.

• the full name as it stands in the breeding document;
• date of birth;
• colour and markings;
• microchip or transponder number;
• UELN or studbook number;
• breed and the book it is registered in;
• sire and dam;
• passport number and date, and who issued it.

Check separately that the chip number in the contract matches the passport and what the scanner reads on the living horse. Thirty seconds, and the only protection against a substitution. Which papers a horse ought to have is in Spanish horse papers.

Price, payment and VAT

What has to be spelled out:

• the price in figures and in words, and the currency;
• whether VAT is included and who accounts for it;
• the size of the deposit and what happens to it in every scenario;
• payment dates, bank details and who pays the transfer charges;
• who carries the exchange difference if payment is in another currency.

VAT deserves its own line in Europe: a business seller charges it, a private individual does not, and a VAT-registered buyer in another member state can normally take the horse zero-rated.

A deposit can be refundable or not, and those are not synonyms. The contract has to say plainly whether it comes back if the horse fails the vetting. If it does not say, it does not come back.

Full payment before the viewing and before the examination is a red flag in any country.

The vetting inside the deal

This is where contracts most often turn out to be empty.

The examination has to be a condition of the deal: the sale goes ahead if the result satisfies the buyer. Four things need agreeing.

In Germany the standard scope is the AKU, agreed as a package in advance; Spain has no single national protocol and the examination is arranged with the buyer's own vet. In both the buyer pays, which is why the buyer picks the vet.

Write in serum storage as well: a cheap procedure that lets you check a month later whether the horse was shown under sedation. What an examination consists of is in the pre-purchase exam.

Warranties, and what the law gives you anyway

The seller confirms several things in writing. The wording depends on the country, the sense is the same everywhere.

• He is the owner, or acts under the owner's power of attorney.
• The horse is not pledged, seized, jointly owned, leased out or promised to another buyer.
• The breeding matches the papers.
• Illnesses, injuries and operations known to him are listed.
• There are no disputes and no unpaid livery bills.

Put known vices in a clause of their own: crib-biting, weaving, box-walking, refusing to load. Silence gets interpreted various ways afterwards, a written line does not.

What the law adds on top differs sharply, and it is worth knowing which regime you are standing in.

Germany. The BGB gives a two-year liability for defects present at handover. A commercial seller cannot exclude it against a private buyer, may shorten it to one year for a live animal, and for the first twelve months carries the burden of proof. Between two private parties the warranty is normally excluded outright — the familiar gekauft wie gesehen — which holds for everything except a defect the seller concealed dishonestly.

Spain. Between private parties the Civil Code's hidden-defect regime applies, and for animals the window is short: the redhibitory action has to be brought within forty days of delivery, and a horse bought at a fair or public auction is largely outside it. Where the seller is a business and the buyer a consumer, the conformity regime applies instead, measured in years rather than days.

Forty days is why a serious examination happens before signature in Spain, not after.

Handover, risk and keep

Three dates that get confused and are not the same.

1. The date of signature.
2. The date title passes.
3. The date the horse is physically handed over.

A month can pass between the second and the third: export papers, waiting for a transporter, quarantine. All that time the horse stands somewhere and eats. So the contract needs answers to:

• who pays for livery, feed, farrier and vet in that period;
• from what moment the risk of death and injury passes to the buyer;
• who arranges and pays for the export papers and the TRACES entry;
• what happens if the horse is injured before departure;
• who insures it for transport, and for what sum.

What people forget most often

Assembled from other people's trouble.

• The language of the contract. If the text is in Spanish or German and the translation is "for understanding", the original is the one with legal force.
• Governing law and jurisdiction. Within the EU the parties may choose both, and without that clause a dispute becomes a project of its own.
• A trial period. It exists, but only if written down: length, conditions of keep, who pays, on what grounds the horse goes back.
• Tack and feed. Whether the rug, the headcollar and the usual feed travel with the horse. Minor, but it helps in the first days.
• The veterinary history. Ask for the records, the images and the vaccination entries, not only the passport.
• Liability for walking away. What happens if the seller changes his mind after taking the deposit.

What I do, and where my remit ends

I source horses in Spain and in Germany and run the deal end to end: viewing, vetting, negotiation, papers, logistics. On the contract side I watch the substance — that the horse is described precisely, that the vetting is built in, that dates and money are counted to the end.

I do not do the legal part and I do not sign for a client. The text is read by a lawyer in the law of the country where the sale takes place, and that is not a formality.

What sourcing with checks and support covers is on the services page.