Contract questions / who signs what / automatic renewal question

November 25, 2010

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Question:

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Ken

    We have the All-In-One Fire Alarm Contract.  We are installing a Fire Alarm System for a General Contractor as a Subcontractor.  The Owner of the building is a Mc Donalds Franchisee.  We are hoping to sell the Franchisee a Monitoring contract.

    Who signs what?

    What contracts do I need?

Scott D. Florez

Digital Dynamics Corporation

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Answer:

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    The Fire All in One is really designed to be signed by the subscriber who is contracting for installation, monitoring, inspection and service.  Of course with the stoke of a pen you can omit any of the component services.  In your case the contractor is signing for the installation; that may be the only part of the contract that you use for the general contractor.

    The building owner however is going to need monitoring, inspection and service, and you can use those parts of the Fire All in One for the building owner.  In fact you could leave in the installation part and leave off the price, just indicating that it's paid by the contractor pursuant to separate agreement.

    If you intend to limit your service to the subscriber to monitoring the fire alarm then you can just use the Fire Alarm Monitoring contract.

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Question

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Ken

    We have your entire set of contracts. Is it legal to change the commercial automatic renewal clause to renewing year to year instead of month to month in Illinois and Wisconsin? From the website, it looks like the automatic renewal clause going month to month only applies to consumers. Thank you.

Suzanne Ainsworth

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Answer

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    By legal I know you mean enforceable.  You need to check both state statutes, and you can start at https://www.kirschenbaumesq.com/autorenewal.htm

    Both Illinois and Wisconsin have statutes that address automatic renewal.  Don't risk violating the statute - by having a month to month renewal you will be safe.  Also, as I have recommend many times, you are better off getting new contracts signed than relying on automatic renewals.  The Standard Contract forms are 10 or 7 years for commercial and 5 years for residential.  That leaves you plenty of time to visit your subscriber, renew the relationship, suggest upgrades and a new contract.

    New contracts will be updated , and hopefully so will the system.