Instrument

A document or writing which gives formal expression to a legal act or agreement, for the purpose of creating, securing, modifying, op terminating a right; a writing executed and delivered as the evidence of an act or agreement. The writing which contains some agreement, and is so called because it has been prepared as a memorial of what has taken place or been agreed upon. It includes bills, bonds, conveyances, leases, mortgages, promissory notes, and wills, but scarcely accounts, ordinary letters or memoranda. The agreement and the instrument in which it is contained are very different things, — the latter being only evidence of the existence of the former. The instrument or form of the contract may be valid, but a contract itself may be void on account of fraud. See Aylifife, Parerg.

805; Dun. Adm. Fr. 220.

A forthcoming bond is an “instrument for the payment of money.’'

Coe v. Straus, 11 Wis, 72.

A bank check payable in confederate currency was held not “an instrument payable in money” under the Alabarna Code in relation to commercial paper; Bank of Mobile V. Brown, 42 Ala. 108. A statute requiring “any Instrument of writing” sued on to be filed, does not apply to a contract signed by both parties and deposited with a third person for safe keeping, it applies only to obligations executed only by the party sued; Bowling v. Hax, 55 Mo. 446.