A personal loan agreement for lending between friends or family — the loan amount, optional interest, a plain repayment schedule, and the one clause this kind of loan needs most: both sides stating, in writing, that it is a loan and not a gift. Download the ready-to-fill template below, or read the field-by-field checklist first.
A complete, ready-to-fill PDF — 9 clauses, blanks for every detail, and a signature block for both parties. Free, no email, no account. Read it and adapt it before you use it; the cover page explains what it can and cannot do for you.
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This document is a general-purpose template provided for information only. It is not legal advice, it does not create a lawyer–client relationship, and nobody has reviewed it against your situation.
Laws differ by country, state and province, and they change. A clause that is standard in one place can be unenforceable — or illegal — in another. Terms that are ordinary between two businesses can be void in a consumer or employment context.
Read every clause before you use it, fill in every blank, and delete anything that does not apply. For anything high-value, unusual, or that you could not afford to lose a dispute over, have a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction review it before it is signed.
These are the fields and clauses a friends-and-family loan agreement needs. Leaving one out doesn’t necessarily void the agreement, but each gap is a spot where you and the other party can end up remembering the deal differently.
Lender & borrower names and addresses
Full legal names and addresses for both people — the same names both sign under below.
Loan amount & disbursement
The exact amount, when it changes hands, and how — bank transfer, check, or cash.
Non-gift acknowledgement
Both parties state, in writing, that this is a loan and not a gift — the clause a friends-and-family loan disputes most often, and the whole point of writing this down.
Interest (or interest-free)
A rate if you want one, or "0%" if you don't — stated explicitly either way, so it never looks like interest was simply forgotten.
Repayment schedule
A single payoff date, or a set of instalments with a first due date — a plain "whenever you can" is not a schedule.
What happens on a missed payment
A grace period, a notice-and-cure window, and what happens if the balance still isn't paid — decided now, not improvised mid-dispute.
Signatures & date
Both lender and borrower sign and date it. Unlike a one-sided promissory note, this is a two-way agreement — it isn't binding until both have signed.
A loan between people who trust each other feels like it shouldn’t need paperwork — that’s often the whole point of lending to a friend or a family member instead of a bank. But the trust is exactly why it needs writing down: there is no institution tracking the balance, sending statements, or remembering the terms the way a bank would. If the two people involved remember the deal differently — was it $3,000 or $3,500? was repayment due this year or “eventually”? — there is nothing to check against.
The sharpest version of that ambiguity is the question this template answers directly: was the money a loan, or was it a gift? Without a written answer, that question tends to resurface at the worst possible time — during a divorce or estate settlement, when someone else’s money is now involved, or if a tax authority asks why a large transfer between two people was never declared as a gift. The non-gift acknowledgement in this template has both people confirm, at the time the money changes hands, that it was a loan and that the borrower is obligated to repay it — removing the ambiguity before it has a chance to matter.
Writing it down also protects the relationship itself, not just the money. A written repayment schedule and a defined process for a missed payment mean that if things go off track, both people are working from terms they already agreed to — not improvising an uncomfortable conversation from scratch, with the friendship or family tie itself absorbing the tension a plain, agreed process would have handled instead.
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Not legal advice — for larger loans, or if tax or estate questions apply, have a local attorney or tax preparer review your agreement before relying on this template alone.