JUDGES HATE THIS ONE TRICK!

Generally speaking, you will be asked to swear or affirm that you are going to tell the truth, and that you understand the consequences of not telling the truth. Whether you do a whole ceremony about it or not, it doesn’t really matter – but the court will want to know that you are competent to testify truthfully and that you know that you’re not allowed to testify to things you know aren’t true.

If you’re asking “can you be forced to testify?”, the answer is “Yes but it depends.” If you’re competent to testify and the officers of the court deem your testimony important, they can subpoena your testimony. If you have a reason to contest it, you can – but “I don’t want to” isn’t good enough.

All contracts are negotiable, you did nothing wrong other than not having a conversation before wasting paper, the main issue is that for most people the negotiation is “if you want to work here you have to agree to all this.”

But yeah reasonable accommodation and mutual understandings, etc, should be written down and signed. I challenged the non-disclosure agreement at my job once because it literally said I couldn’t talk about my work with ANYONE, and a plain reading of it would mean I’d be unable to even talk to my boss about what I was supposed to be doing. It was poorly written and probably unenforceable. My boss didn’t like that so I signed it anyway and then focused on finding work elsewhere (he was a dick and his company got raided by the FBI a few years later)

Held against you. It works much better with the proper wording.

Also contempt of court. Do not pass go.