Definition
In the law of contracts, additionales are additional terms or propositions to be added to a former agreement. The term describes supplementary provisions that parties append to an existing contract, expanding or modifying its original scope without replacing the underlying agreement.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in older legal texts and historical contract disputes. Researchers encountering additionales in historical documents should treat it as a signal that the source involves a modification or supplement to a pre-existing agreement — functionally analogous to what modern practice calls an addendum, amendment, or rider. The word rarely appears in post-nineteenth-century case law or statutory material, so its presence is itself a chronological marker.
Because all four shelf sources give nearly identical, minimal definitions, the term does not carry hidden technical complexity — but the brevity of those definitions can mislead a researcher into missing the contractual context. Additionales are not freestanding agreements; they presuppose and depend on a prior contract. That distinction matters when analyzing enforceability, consideration, and the parol evidence rule in historical disputes.
Researchers working in civil law or mixed-jurisdiction archives (Louisiana, Quebec, Spanish colonial records) should note that addiciones and additionales appear in Roman and civil law traditions with comparable meaning, and the term may surface in documents predating common law standardization of contract modification doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in close agreement, differing only in phrasing. Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's are nearly verbatim: "additional terms or propositions to be added to a former agreement." Rapalje & Lawrence adds no substantive content beyond this formulation but usefully places the entry adjacent to ADDRESS, suggesting that compilers of that era treated additionales as a transitional Latin term rather than a living term of art.
None of the historical sources explain how additionales interacted with the formal requirements for contract modification that developed through the nineteenth century — such as whether additional consideration was required or whether the additionales could be proven by parol evidence. That silence reflects the term's age rather than any settled rule. Researchers should not read the brevity of these entries as indicating a simple or uncontested legal operation.
Black's first edition appends a separate entry (ADDONE / Addonne) immediately after additionales, a Norman French term meaning "given to." The physical proximity in the dictionary is coincidental alphabetical ordering; the two terms are unrelated in meaning and should not be conflated.