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Chapters on nominate contracts (endowment, sales, options, barter/ mu‘āwaḍa, hire and lease, partnerships -shirka, muzāra‘a, musāqāt, muḍāraba-, reward/ju‘āla, deposit, fungible and non-fungible loan, agency, financial and personal guaranty, assignment, settlement, pledge, gift), shuf‘a, wills, inheritance, marriage and divorce, mahr, and alimony took almost all of its substance from prominent Shi’i fiqh treatises. Other chapters (classification of properties, easement, usufruct, general rules of obligations and contracts, nationality, registration of civil status, domicile, engagement, guardianship, and evidence) are mainly influenced by Swiss and French Civil Codes and Swiss Code of Obligations.

Chapters on nominate contracts (endowment, sales, options, barter/ mu‘āwaḍa, hire and lease, partnerships -shirka, muzāra‘a, musāqāt, muḍāraba-, reward/ju‘āla, deposit, fungible and non-fungible loan, agency, financial and personal guaranty, assignment, settlement, pledge, gift), shuf‘a, wills, inheritance, marriage and divorce, mahr, and alimony took almost all of its substance from prominent Shi’i fiqh treatises. Other chapters (classification of properties, easement, usufruct, general rules of obligations and contracts, nationality, registration of civil status, domicile, engagement, guardianship, and evidence) are mainly influenced by Swiss and French Civil Codes and Swiss Code of Obligations.

The Act replaced the Iranian Family Protection Act 1975 and modified other family law provisions as embodied in the Civil Code and the Divorce Act 1992. It contains procedural matters (Family Courts, Family Consultation Centers) as well as substantial ones (marriage, divorce, custody, nafaqa, alimony and pensions) and the criminal sanctions. Major changes introduced generally are:

A) The Family Court now involves a female consultant judge who is to give her opinion in each case, which the sitting judge (a man as in other courts) has to consider, but not to follow, in deciding the case;

B) The jurisdiction of the Family Court is now extended to additional matters, including child adoption, embryo donation, and sex change;

C) The process for divorce by mutual consent is facilitated;

D) The value of the Mahr (or the portion of the Mahr) for collecting which the debtor imprisonment provisions can be invoked is now limited to a specified amount (equal to 110 gold coin);

E) Temporary marriage needs not be registered now save in specific situations;

َMain chapters include: 1- Merchant and Commercial Transaction Defined, 2- Commercial Register Books and Commercial Registration Offices, 3- Commercial Companies, 4- Bills of Exchange, Promissory Notes, Checks, 5- Bearer Instruments, 6- Brokerage, 7- Commission Agency, 8- Transportation Contract, 9- Commercial Deputy and Commercial Agents, 10- guaranty, 11- Bankruptcy, 12- Criminal Bankruptcy, 13- Reorganization, 14- Trade Name, 15- Legal Entities, 16- Other Provisions.

Articles 21-93 of this Code, regarding joint stock companies, was repealed and replaced by the Joint Stock Companies Act (1969).

This 'ratified bill' replaced articles 21 to 93 of the Commercial Code pursuant to the legislation enacted on December 10, 1964.

Some significant changes hereby made in the law of joint-stock companies are:

1- Public and private joint-stock companies are distinguished;

2- All directors may, under specified circumstances, be held jointly liable for the acts of any one of them;

3- The fact that directors, in transactions they made with third parties on behalf of the company, have been in breach of the trust or duties delegated to them does not generally excuse the company against third parties from performing those transactions

4- Directors cannot make transactions on their owns’ behalf which involve competition with the company

5- Shares cannot be issued before the company is registered, and bearer shares cannot be issued until all their nominal value be paid by the shareholder.

6- Provisions are introduced on subjects not previously dealt with: executive officer, capital increase and reduction, liquidation, and savings bonds.

The main objective of the act is to introduce legitimate, profitable replacements for conventional interest-bearing banking operations which are considered by Sharia to be usurious. A number of these replacement operations, used in time deposits (investment accounts), involve some nominate contract –other than loan- between the bank and its customers which allows the parties to share the proceeds of a production or trade activity done by either of them; that is, some kind of partnership in its broad meaning. The acting party can, at the same time, insure the loss of the investing party to remove the risks of partnership to the latter and give her the same immunity as loan does. These are: Muḍāraba, Muzāra‘a, Musāqāt, Murābaḥa, partnership (Sharaka), and direct investment.  Other contracts suggested to be used in time deposits are: presale (salam), Istiṣnā‘, Ju‘āla, hire-purchase, and installment sale. For sight deposits (Qarḍ Ḥasan), lottery prizes are used in lieu of fixed interests to incentivize customers.

A procedural law, containing provisions governing the organization of registry system, the processes of delimitation and registration of real properties, registration of deeds, notary services, administrative enforcement of official deeds, offenses and penalties and the service fees. It, nonetheless, includes one important modification in substantive contract law as well, which is one of the first socially-motivated deviations from the system of ‘freedom of contracts’ as conceived in Shi’i fiqh:

Sale had long been used as a fictional guise for the unlawful intention of the parties to make an interest-bearing loan. This gave the buyer/borrower the additional advantage of appropriating the item of sale/collateral in case of seller/lender’s default, even if the value of collateral be much higher than the price/ loan sum. The Registry Act changed this situation: Regardless of the title the parties give to their contract, whenever the real function of the transaction is to provide security for a debt, the creditor can take only a portion of the collateral equal to the value of the debt, and needs to do this always through judicial or administrative enforcement procedure.

A Ra’y-e Vahdat-e Raviyyeh (opinion to harmonize the practice of lower courts in cases of disagreement) issued by the Plenary Assembly of Iranian Supreme Court. The sale of pledged properties by the pledgor (debtor) without the consent of the pledgee (creditor) is held voidable (ghayr nāfidh).

A Ra’y-e Esrārī (opinion issued when the lower court to which the case is remanded reiterates on the rejected decision) by the Civil Division of the Plenary Assembly of Iranian Supreme Court. According to this opinion, when the sale of pledged property by the pledgor contains a stipulation to the effect that the seller/pledgor has to pay all the debts belonging to the property within a specified time, the sale is enforceable at the request of the purchaser provided that the stipulation be also enforced at the same time.