Inure

Boilerplate Anatomy™ Go Premium Resources: commercial imperative | Verbiage | Look, I tried | The ultimate client Index: Click ᐅ to expand: Boilerplate Representations and warranties Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

Inure
/ɪˈnjʊə,ɪˈnjɔː/ (v.)

(pedantic): Of a legal right, especially one arising under a contract, to belong to, or be available to, a person.

To be, in other words, a right.

This is often seen in the context of successors and assigns boilerplate.

Why “to the benefit of”?

Because it is the verbal construction that provides enough diversion to obscure the fact that this is a statement of not just the bleeding obvious, but the necessarily true. A contract creates rights and obligations in and of itself; there is no need to further inure it, or them, to anyone. They just are. The inheritance of a right between a dying, or merging, or assigning counterparty is, likewise, an operation of some defined legal process or other (perhaps a novation, merger or the laws surrounding probate and succession). These successions and assignments are not, principally a function of the contract itself — except where it prohibits assignment).

By entering into this contract, I acquire a right. I do not need it to then inure to me. If you are a party to a contract your counterparty's obligations are legally binding. That’s all you need to know. Chicken licken, relax: the sky will not fall on your head if you don't say they “inure” to you. Or, for that matter, to you successors and assigns.