Definition
A condition positive is a condition that requires something affirmative to occur — that a specified event must happen or a specified act must be performed — before a legal obligation, right, or interest becomes effective, continues, or terminates. It stands in contrast to a condition negative (also called a condition restrictive or prohibitory), which requires that something not happen or not be done.
In contract and property law, a condition positive operates as an activating or sustaining requirement. If the demanded act or event does not occur, the consequence attached to the condition (whether creation, continuation, or defeasance of a right) follows. In estate law, a fee simple subject to a condition subsequent may impose a condition positive — requiring the grantee to perform some ongoing act, such as maintaining a structure or using land for a particular purpose — with a right of re-entry in the grantor if the grantee fails.
In the context of conditional releases, bail, and probation, a condition positive takes the form of an affirmative obligation imposed on the released person: report to a supervisor, maintain employment, complete a treatment program, appear at scheduled hearings. Violation of a condition positive — failure to do the required thing — is the standard trigger for revocation proceedings.
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Common Confusion
Condition positive is most easily confused with condition precedent. The two concepts operate differently and at different levels of analysis. Condition positive describes the character of a condition (it demands affirmative action), while condition precedent describes the timing and triggering function of a condition (it must be satisfied before a duty arises). A condition precedent can be either positive (requiring something to be done before a right vests) or negative (requiring that something not occur). Researchers using historical sources should not assume these terms are interchangeable; they answer different questions about a conditional obligation.
Condition positive is also occasionally confused with affirmative covenant. A covenant is a promise; a condition is a limiting event attached to an estate or obligation. The legal consequences of breach differ significantly — breach of covenant gives rise to a damages action, while failure to satisfy a condition may result in automatic defeasance or a right of entry, depending on the estate form.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term appears rarely in modern legal writing as a standalone phrase. Contemporary lawyers and courts are far more likely to use plain descriptive language — "affirmative condition," "condition requiring performance," or simply the specific obligation itself — than to invoke the technical classification. Researchers encountering "condition positive" in a source are almost certainly working with a historical text, a treatise drawing on classical property or contract taxonomy, or a jurisdiction that retains traditional common law vocabulary in its courts or statutes.
The classification matters most in property law research. When reading historical conveyances, deed restrictions, or trust instruments, understanding that a condition positive imposes an affirmative obligation — and that failure to perform differs from active violation of a prohibitory condition — is essential to interpreting the triggering language correctly. Historical deeds frequently use "condition positive" and "condition negative" as a paired taxonomy; missing this framework can lead a researcher to misread what activates a grantor's right of entry or causes defeasance of an estate.
In criminal law and bail research, the taxonomy itself rarely appears, but the underlying concept is pervasive. Virtually every modern probation order and bail agreement is structured around a mix of affirmative obligations (condition positive) and prohibitions (condition negative). The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia entries on probation conditions and bail conditions address this structure in modern terms. Researchers connecting historical doctrine to contemporary practice will find the condition positive / condition negative distinction a useful analytical bridge.
Be alert to the fact that Black's Law Dictionary defines this term with deliberate brevity. The entry has not significantly expanded across editions, suggesting the term retains its classical formulation without modernization. Researchers should not expect extensive doctrinal elaboration in standard dictionaries.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary defines condition positive simply as one "which requires that an event shall happen or an act be done." This is consistent with the classical common law taxonomy of conditions drawn from property and contract doctrine, and the definition has remained stable without material revision. The formulation is compact but accurate: it captures both the event-based form (something must happen) and the act-based form (something must be done), distinguishing the condition positive from its negative counterpart purely by character of demand rather than by position in a transaction.
Historical legal dictionaries and treatises — including Bouvier's Law Dictionary and the institutional writers on real property — treat condition positive and condition negative as a primary binary classification of conditions by their content, separate from the classifications by timing (precedent / subsequent) or by enforceability (lawful / void). This layered taxonomy is largely absent from modern legal writing, which has moved toward more functional descriptions. The absence of elaboration in historical dictionary sources reflects the term's role as a taxonomic label rather than a doctrine with contested elements — it named a category rather than defined a test.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Probation — Conditions, Revocation, and Procedure (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)
Bail and Bond — Types, Determination, and Conditions (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)
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