It seems … reasonable to say that a contract or payment secured by duress is defective not because of some difference in the nature of the consent, but because of the impropriety of the alternative presented; that is, of the pressure used. However, not every improper pressure is duress, since our legal system provides remedies that are reasonably effective in protecting the innocent against improper pressures under ordinary circumstances, and it is better to require the use of such remedies where practicable than to resort to an indiscriminate overhauling of transactions in court. The theory underlying this article is that, to constitute duress, the following elements are both essential and sufficient: (1) The transaction must be induced by a wrongful threat, (2) for which the law offers no adequate remedy, that is, no remedy which (by practical laymen's standards, not those of the common-law nor even of equity) is really sufficient to compensate for the wrong suffered if the threat should be carried out.…

Private individuals are … aware of the effectiveness in some situations of a threat to break a contract. In some contractual dealings, the two parties cannot always keep abreast of each other in performance as the work progresses. Inequalities of investment in preparation and performance, or other inequalities between the parties, create situations where one can exert considerable pressure on the other by a threat of disregard of contract obligations.