Definition
In legal usage, BALANCE carries two distinct meanings that share a common root idea — the remainder after accounting for both sides — but operate in very different contexts.
1. Accounting and debt sense. The amount remaining due from one party to another after a settlement of accounts reflecting their mutual dealings. A balance is the net result of the debit and credit sides of an account: what is left when each party's obligations to the other have been set off. The concept presupposes mutual dealings and the existence of both debt and credit between the parties; without that mutuality, there is no balance in the legal sense, only a simple debt.
2. Remainder or residue sense. The portion of something that remains after a part has been disposed of, accounted for, or distributed. Common in estates and property contexts: the "balance" of an estate is what remains after specific bequests, debts, and expenses have been satisfied.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To bring items into equipoise; to support an object on a narrow base; to make accounts agree; to compare forces or values; to bring a financial account to equilibrium.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): An apparatus for weighing; the state of equipoise; fair comparison or estimate between opposing weights or considerations.
The common meaning centers on equilibrium — a scale with two sides brought to equal weight. The primary legal meaning in historical dictionaries is narrower and more technical: not equilibrium, but the net remainder after offsetting mutual obligations. A legal balance is not a state of equality; it is the amount by which one side exceeds the other. Researchers encountering "balance" in old pleadings or commercial records should resist the intuition that the term signals fairness or equality. It signals arithmetic difference.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
General balance. A sum due for services rendered where multiple items have been bailed or entrusted together; the aggregate amount owed across a course of dealings rather than on a single transaction. Distinguished from a balance on a specific, discrete account.
Balance of an estate. The residue remaining after satisfaction of debts, charges, and specific legacies; functions as a residuary concept in probate and testamentary contexts.
Balance due on general account. A commercial usage referring to the net amount owed across an open, running account between merchants or counterparties, as distinguished from a closed or stated account.
Why It Matters in Research
The mutuality requirement is the hidden trap. Historical sources — particularly Bouvier — are explicit that a balance can only be struck where mutual dealings existed. This matters in insolvency and estate contexts: an assignee of an insolvent or the executor of a deceased person can only recover or owe the balance, not the gross sum on one side of the account, and that mutuality must have existed at the time of the triggering event (assignment or death). Researchers working with pre-20th-century commercial litigation records, bankruptcy proceedings, or estate disputes should check whether the court was treating a claim as a true "balance" (implying set-off of cross-obligations) or a bare debt — the distinction could determine who could sue, for how much, and in which court.
The term also appears as a structural legal concept entirely separate from accounting: courts "balance" competing interests in constitutional, evidentiary, and equitable doctrine. These uses share the common-language meaning of weighing opposing forces but are analytically distinct from the debt-and-credit sense. Law Mind's encyclopedia entries treat these as separate doctrinal frameworks (see Encyclopedia cross-references below). Do not conflate the accounting term with the doctrinal one when reading historical sources — a 19th-century reference to "striking a balance" almost certainly means arithmetic remainder, not judicial interest-weighing.
In property and bequest contexts, "balance of a tract of land" and "balance of an estate" appear in older American case law and require careful reading: the term may mean the physical remainder of a parcel after a conveyance, or the residuary estate after satisfaction of prior claims.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in close agreement on the core accounting definition: the difference between the debit and credit sides of mutual accounts. Black's (both editions), Bouvier, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Burrill all converge on this formulation, with minor variation in phrasing. Anderson adds meaningful texture by distinguishing explicitly between (1) the excess on one side of an account and (2) the residue or remainder of an estate, making him the most useful of the shelf sources for a researcher encountering the term in a non-commercial context.
Bouvier's emphasis on mutuality — and on the timing of that mutuality in insolvency and death scenarios — is the most practically useful gloss not fully developed in the other dictionaries. Black's first edition gestures toward this with its statement that balance "implies mutual dealings, and the existence of debt and credit, without which there could be no balance," but does not develop the insolvency implications Bouvier does.
None of the historical dictionaries address the modern doctrinal sense of "balancing" as a judicial method for resolving competing legal interests. This usage — as in balancing hardships in equity, or balancing probative value against prejudice in evidence — developed through 20th-century American jurisprudence and is absent from the 19th-century shelf sources entirely. Researchers should not expect to find doctrinal balancing tests explained or even named in these dictionaries.
Jurisdictional Note
The mutuality requirement for striking a balance in commercial accounts was recognized broadly across American and English common law, but its application in set-off and insolvency proceedings varied by jurisdiction in procedural detail. New Jersey's Justice Court Act and Kentucky decisions involving "balance of a tract of land" reflect early American courts adapting the concept to local property and procedural contexts. For modern research, UCC Article 9 and state-specific accounting statutes govern commercial balance disputes; no single uniform rule applies.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Balancing of Hardships — Disproportionate Burden on the Defendant as a Defense to Equitable Relief (The Law Mind Remedies & Equity Encyclopedia)
Rule 403 Balancing — Exclusion of Relevant Evidence: Probative Value vs. Prejudicial Effect (The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia)
Regulatory Takings — Penn Central Balancing Test (The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia)