If you are unusual, well and good, but that makes you, well, unusual. For my own part, I would like to believe all sorts of things about what I would do in dire straits, but I'll remain agnostic unless and until I get to find out.

Anyway, your father sounds like a wise man. It is dishonorable to break an agreement, certainly. It is also dishonorable to exploit someone's desperate circumstances to coerce them into signing an extremely one-sided and unreasonable contract. We are all bound by a set of implicit agreements regarding basic standards of civilized behavior; that's a prerequisite for civilization itself.