Definition
Si contingat (Latin: "if it happen") is a conditional phrase used in old English conveyancing to introduce a contingency upon which a grant, limitation, or estate would take effect or be defeated. When inserted into a deed or other instrument of conveyance, the words created a condition — typically suspensive or subsequent — tying the operation of the transfer to the occurrence of a specified future event. The phrase functioned as a formal trigger: if the named contingency happened, the legal consequence followed; if it did not, the conveyance operated differently or not at all.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No entry. The phrase has no general-English currency.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry. The phrase is purely a term of art from Latin legal usage.
Because si contingat has no life outside legal instruments, the COMMON LANGUAGE section does not apply. Researchers encountering the phrase in any document can treat it as technical legal language without risk of ordinary-meaning confusion.
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Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow but precisely situated term of art. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should keep three things in mind.
First, the term is essentially confined to medieval and early modern English conveyancing — deeds, settlements, and grants drafted before systematic equity practice displaced much of the old conditional language. A researcher encountering si contingat in a primary source is almost certainly working with a document from this period, and the surrounding language should be read for the structure of a conditional estate: what was the contingency, what estate was carved out, and what happened on failure of the condition?
Second, the distinction between a condition and a limitation matters here. Si contingat could introduce either a condition subsequent (defeating a vested estate) or a conditional limitation (shifting the estate to another). Historical sources do not always flag this distinction clearly, and the difference carries significant consequences for the nature of the grantor's remaining interest and the availability of re-entry. Researchers relying solely on the phrase itself, without attending to the broader instrument, may misread the type of conditional interest created.
Third, the Coke citation (10 Coke, 42a — Mary Partington's Case) that all three historical dictionaries reference is the authoritative source for this phrase in English law. Researchers who need to understand how early courts construed si contingat language should trace that case, as it shaped the doctrine of conditional limitations well into the period covered by the Law Mind corpus.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries — both editions of Black's and Burrill's — are in complete agreement. All three give the Latin meaning ("if it happen"), classify the phrase as words of condition in old conveyances, and point to the same Coke authority. The entries are nearly identical in substance, differing only in minor typographic convention.
What the historical dictionaries do not do is explain the doctrinal work the phrase performed. None distinguishes between conditions precedent, conditions subsequent, and conditional limitations — a distinction that becomes critical when analyzing the instrument's effect on title. Burrill's entry appears to continue ("Em-") but is cut off, suggesting a longer treatment that was not preserved in the source material available. The truncation is notable: Burrill's was generally more expansive than Black's on Latin terms of art, and researchers who can access a complete copy of Burrill's may find additional doctrinal commentary there.
The Coke citation shared across all three entries — 10 Coke, 42a — is to Mary Partington's Case, a Report of Sir Edward Coke dealing with conditions and limitations in conveyances. This is a real and well-known authority in the history of English real property law and is the appropriate starting point for any research into the case law background of the phrase.
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Jurisdictional Note
Si contingat is a term of English law origin with no distinct American jurisdictional development. It appears in American legal dictionaries as a historical import. Researchers in American property law contexts will encounter the phrase only in materials tracing English common law inheritance or in early colonial-era instruments.
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