Q&A: Something Not Yet in the World
Something Not Yet in the World
Question
In the Talmudic topic of something not yet in the world, it seems that a legal effect cannot take effect if it is not adjacent to the act that creates it. The question is: why is that so? What is wrong with doing an act now that will create the legal effect later on? After all, in the end the legal effect takes place through intent, and the intent is directed toward the later result.
Answer
This is the principle of “his acquisition has expired.”
The most natural explanation is metaphysical. If one understands that a legal effect is a kind of existent thing (as I argued in my article “What Is a Legal Effect,” see here on the site), then as long as that existent thing does not yet exist, there is nothing for the legal effect that was created to take effect upon. In Rabbi Shimon Fisher’s book Beit Yishai, vol. 1, no. 35, he uses this to explain the laws of conditions (a contingent legal effect).
But one can also say that if the act has no immediate consequence, then the person does not have fully settled intent. When a person creates a legal effect whose consequences are immediate, it is clear to him that there is no turning back and that the act has been done. If it is delayed, he may think that it is not yet final and therefore not fully resolve in his mind, even though he performed an act.
Discussion on Answer
Even in physics they do not believe in action at a distance. The effect takes place immediately after the cause.
The simple explanation is that “from now and after thirty days” is a gradual construction of the legal effect. True, apparently this is a three-way dispute among the Amoraim (Kiddushin 60a). Maybe that is what you meant by “it takes effect little by little.”
That explains why it does not take effect when the thing does not yet exist in the world, but it still does not explain why it has to take effect adjacent to the action. Let the action determine that the legal effect will take effect when I intended it to, meaning when it comes into the world.
The second claim you wrote fits only according to those who hold that, for something not yet in the world, the deficiency is in settled intent.
By the way, regarding the case of “his acquisition has expired”-is it not explained there? After all, in an acquisition “from now and after thirty days” we see that it works. The question is whether there it is really a waiting period for the legal effect, and then we see that it does not need to be adjacent to the act, or whether there it takes effect little by little…?