Definition
In legal usage, HEREAFTER is a temporal adverb meaning at some future time — after the present moment. When used in a statute, instrument, or legal document, it signals prospective operation only, excluding both the present and the past. The term does not imply unlimited duration; it points in the direction of future time as bounded by the context in which it appears. It is the temporal counterpart of HERETOFORE, which refers to time past.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A future existence or state; existence after death.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): In time to come; in some future time or state.
The gap between common and legal usage here is significant. In everyday and literary English, HEREAFTER often carries a theological or existential sense — the afterlife, what comes after death. In legal drafting, the word carries no such connotation. It is a precise temporal marker meaning prospectively from this point forward, bounded by surrounding context. A reader importing the common meaning into a statute or deed would fundamentally misread its operative scope.
Common Confusion
HEREAFTER is occasionally confused with FOREVER or IN PERPETUITY. Bouvier's explicitly corrects this: hereafter is not a synonym for forever. It indicates a direction in time — forward from the relevant reference point — but the extent of that future time is limited by context. A statute reading "hereafter applicable" does not mean "applicable for all eternity without qualification"; it means "applicable to future circumstances as the rest of the statute defines them." Researchers reading older instruments should resist conflating temporal direction with temporal extent.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research value of HEREAFTER is its role as a prospectivity trigger in statutory construction. When a legislature uses hereafter in a statute, courts have consistently treated it as a signal that the act applies only to future conduct or conditions, not to pending actions or vested rights already accrued. This makes the word a potential lifeline in retroactivity disputes — and a trap for researchers who read a statute without noticing its temporal signal.
Two practical points for corpus research:
First, older statutes and instruments sometimes use hereafter loosely, relying on surrounding context to bound its meaning. Bouvier's caveat — that the term is limited by the context to which it refers — means that identifying what hereafter modifies is as important as finding the word itself. Searching for hereafter in isolation will not resolve prospectivity questions; the surrounding clause must be read.
Second, the word appears with high frequency in older deeds, wills, and conveyancing instruments, where its meaning is purely temporal and not existential. Researchers working in 19th-century property instruments should be alert to this usage pattern and distinguish it sharply from modern common usage.
The contrast with HERETOFORE is analytically useful when reading instruments that use both terms to divide a timeline — hereafter governing future obligations, heretofore governing past acts already performed.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries converge on the core meaning but each adds a distinct layer.
Black's (2nd ed.) is the most categorical: hereafter is "always used in statutes and legal documents as indicative of future time, excluding both the present and the past." This framing is important because it treats the word as a term of art with a fixed directional meaning in legal instruments — not a context-dependent one.
Bouvier's softens this slightly and adds the most useful nuance: hereafter "does not necessarily refer to unlimited time" and "is limited by" the context to which it refers. Bouvier's also confirms its role as a prospectivity marker in statutory construction, consistent with Anderson's.
Anderson's entry is the thinnest, essentially restating the statutory prospectivity function without elaboration.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the interpretive question of what happens when hereafter appears in an instrument with ambiguous temporal scope — for instance, a contract that uses both hereafter and at any time. That gap is left to case law and surrounding context, not dictionary definition.
Jurisdictional Note
The prospectivity function of hereafter in statutory construction is broadly consistent across American jurisdictions, but the weight given to the word in retroactivity analysis varies. Some courts treat it as dispositive of legislative intent to apply a statute only prospectively; others treat it as a strong but rebuttable indicator. Researchers working across jurisdictions should not assume uniformity in how much independent work the word does.