Definition
To become void means that a legal instrument, right, obligation, or status ceases to have legal effect — not by an affirmative act of rescission or termination by a party or court, but by the automatic operation of law upon the occurrence of a specified condition or event. When something becomes void, it is treated as having no binding force, as though it never existed or has been wholly extinguished.
The phrase appears most frequently in the context of bonds, contracts, deeds, wills, and marital status. A bond, for example, is commonly drafted to "become void" upon the performance of a condition — meaning that once the condition is satisfied, the bond dissolves without further action. A marriage declared void ab initio does not merely become void prospectively; it is treated as having never been legally formed.
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Common Confusion
BECOME VOID vs. BE DETERMINED: Bouvier's draws a precise distinction worth preserving. "Become void" is a species of the broader genus "be determined." To say that a thing has been determined means it has been brought to an end by any mechanism — performance, breach, judicial act, lapse of time, mutual agreement, or operation of law. To say that a thing has become void is narrower: it specifies that the end came about in one particular mode, namely by automatic legal extinguishment upon a triggering condition. Every instance of becoming void is an instance of termination, but not every termination results in voidness. A researcher who treats these phrases as interchangeable in historical documents will miss meaningful drafting distinctions.
VOID vs. VOIDABLE: A thing that has become void requires no further act to make it ineffective — it is already a nullity. A voidable instrument or status remains in force until a party with standing takes affirmative steps to annul or avoid it. This distinction carries enormous practical weight in contracts, deeds, and family law. See Marriage — Void vs. Voidable Marriages in the Encyclopedia.
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Why It Matters in Research
The phrase "become void" is a term of art embedded in the operative language of historical legal instruments, not merely a synonym for "invalid" or "cancelled." Researchers working with older bonds, recognizances, penal bonds, or condition-based instruments will encounter this phrase in the defeasance clause — the clause specifying that if a condition is performed, the bond shall become void. Misreading that clause as boilerplate rather than as legally operative language governing when and how the obligation extinguishes is a common error.
In historical sources, the phrase also appears in statutes and equity cases to describe what happens to rights, licenses, and patents when conditions subsequent are not met or are violated. The mechanism matters: an instrument that becomes void by operation of law differs from one that is voided by judicial decree, because the former never requires a court to act.
Researchers should also be alert to the temporal dimension. Some instruments become void immediately upon a triggering event; others become void only after notice, lapse of a cure period, or some other procedural step has been completed. Historical courts sometimes disputed whether voidness was instantaneous or ripened over time, and the case law is not uniform.
Finally, in family law contexts — particularly regarding void marriages — the phrase interacts with the ab initio doctrine. A marriage that is void does not merely become void at annulment; it is treated as having been void from its inception. This retroactive quality distinguishes void marriages from voidable ones in ways that affect property rights, legitimacy of children, and inheritance across historical and modern sources alike.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the only shelf source addressing this phrase directly, and its contribution is primarily logical rather than definitional. Bouvier establishes the genus-species relationship between "be determined" (the broader category of all legal endings) and "become void" (a specific mode of ending). The formulation is careful and remains analytically sound: every becoming-void is a determination, but not every determination is a becoming-void.
What Bouvier does not address, and what researchers should supply from other sources, is the full taxonomy of how voidness is triggered — whether by failure of condition, illegality, incapacity, fraud, or some statutory mandate. Historical dictionaries generally treat "become void" as self-explanatory once voidness itself is defined, which means the research burden falls on understanding the instrument-specific and doctrine-specific contexts in which the phrase appears.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Marriage — Void vs. Voidable Marriages (The Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia)
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