I am some­times amazed by the mat­ters that Trin­bag­o­ni­ans take for grant­ed ver­sus the is­sues to which they pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion. With the cost of liv­ing ris­ing steadi­ly over the last few years, many of us have grown ac­cus­tomed to watch­ing for sales and bar­gains so we can save mon­ey—or, as we put it, “stretch our dol­lar.”

When the cost of al­co­hol in­creased dur­ing the last bud­get, bar own­ers quick­ly re­port­ed a de­cline in sales. It seemed to show that we are pay­ing more at­ten­tion to how we spend and are weigh­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween needs and wants. One would as­sume, based on these be­hav­iours, that we are a peo­ple con­scious of how we spend our mon­ey and geared to­ward bet­ter choic­es.

Yet some­how, the same in­di­vid­u­als who scru­ti­nise prices on gro­cery shelves and hunt for deals to save a dol­lar may al­so be hand­ing over large sums of their hard-earned mon­ey with­out tak­ing the pru­dent steps to pro­tect them­selves.

I am con­tin­u­al­ly amazed by the num­ber of peo­ple who en­ter in­to agree­ments or arrange­ments with­out the ben­e­fit of a writ­ten doc­u­ment. This past week, I met and ad­vised sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als whose sto­ries left me speech­less. The thought of hand­ing over sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey with­out prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion should be un­think­able—yet it hap­pens every day.

The Christ­mas sea­son is up­on us, and some­thing mag­i­cal hap­pens dur­ing this time of year. No, not the spir­it of the sea­son or shar­ing—those are the sen­ti­ments oth­ers of­ten men­tion. I re­fer to the spir­it of spend­ing. Even those who com­plain most about fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties some­how find the abil­i­ty to dip deep in­to their pock­ets dur­ing this sea­son. Some in­vest in cars, some take loans to ren­o­vate or fix their homes, and Black Fri­day sales cre­ate end­less traf­fic and ear­ly-morn­ing lines out­side cer­tain stores.

We spend, we bor­row, we in­vest—of­ten with­out a pa­per trail to pro­tect us when it all goes wrong sev­er­al months lat­er.

Imag­ine bor­row­ing mon­ey from a friend or money­len­der (bear­ing in mind that un­reg­is­tered money­len­ders are un­law­ful) with­out a pa­per trail or agree­ment to pro­tect ei­ther par­ty. Con­sid­er hand­ing over $50,000—a rel­a­tive­ly small sum com­pared to what many ac­tu­al­ly bor­row—with­out sign­ing even a ba­sic agree­ment stat­ing the amount bor­rowed and the terms of re­pay­ment. Then imag­ine the bor­row­er re­fus­ing to pay and clev­er­ly avoid­ing any form of ac­knowl­edg­ment of the debt. How do you prove the loan be­fore a court? What ev­i­dence do you have that $50,000 was to be re­paid in six months? Your le­gal bat­tle to re­cov­er your mon­ey be­comes an up­hill one.

We are now prone to “rent-to-own” or “work-to-own” arrange­ments for ve­hi­cles, where the ve­hi­cle re­mains reg­is­tered in the own­er’s name and is hand­ed over to some­one who makes month­ly pay­ments.

Now imag­ine there is no agree­ment and no ev­i­dence of those pay­ments. Months lat­er, the own­er de­cides he wants the ve­hi­cle back af­ter you have al­ready paid a sub­stan­tial amount. With no doc­u­men­ta­tion, the own­er—know­ing the ve­hi­cle is still reg­is­tered in his name—re­ports it stolen or claims he sim­ply loaned it to you and you refuse to re­turn it. Where are the doc­u­ments pro­tect­ing your in­vest­ment?

A re­cent dis­cus­sion left me both amazed and con­cerned. Some­one was liv­ing on a por­tion of land the own­er promised to sell to him. The land was the sub­ject of on­go­ing le­gal ac­tion, and the oc­cu­pi­er agreed to pay all le­gal fees, with those fees to be de­duct­ed from the sale price. Yet there was no agreed sale price and no agree­ment for sale. De­spite in­vest­ing con­sid­er­able amounts to pro­tect the prop­er­ty, the oc­cu­pi­er failed to pro­tect him­self.

I am aware that some peo­ple, even af­ter seek­ing le­gal ad­vice or read­ing my opin­ions, will shake their heads and say, “This could nev­er hap­pen to me.” I of­ten hear the ar­gu­ment that the par­ties are good friends, grew up to­geth­er, or are re­lat­ed—so be­tray­al is un­like­ly. Ibn Taymiyyah once said, “Don’t de­pend too much on any­one in this world be­cause even your shad­ow leaves you when you are in dark­ness.” This is the per­fect anal­o­gy for le­gal mat­ters: when agree­ments fall apart, even the child­hood friend, the rel­a­tive, or the per­son you trust­ed most will leave you stand­ing alone.

We live in a coun­try where com­mis­sion­ers of af­fi­davits, jus­tices of the peace, and at­tor­neys-at-law are with­in easy reach. There is no rea­son agree­ments can­not be re­duced to writ­ing. Even if one wish­es to save mon­ey, an agree­ment does not need to be draft­ed by an at­tor­ney. A sim­ple doc­u­ment out­lin­ing the terms—writ­ten and signed by the par­ties—can of­fer es­sen­tial pro­tec­tion. These are small but cru­cial steps to pro­tect your in­vest­ments and en­sure writ­ten ev­i­dence ex­ists if le­gal ac­tion be­comes nec­es­sary.