Third-party beneficiary
person who may have the right to sue on a contract, despite not having originally been a party to the contract
A third-party beneficiary, in the civil law of contracts, is a person who may have the right to sue on a contract, despite not having originally been an active party to the contract. This right, known as a ius quaesitum tertio, arises when the third party (tertius or alteri) is the intended beneficiary of the contract, as opposed to a mere incidental beneficiary (penitus extraneus). It vests when the third party relies on or assents to the relationship, and gives the third party the right to sue either the promisor (promittens, or performing party) or the promisee (stipulans, or anchor party) of the contract, depending on the circumstances under which the relationship was created.
A contract made in favor of a third party is known as a "third-party beneficiary contract."
Under traditional common law, the ius quaesitum tertio principle was not recognized, instead relying on the doctrine of privity of contract, which restricts rights, obligations, and liabilities arising from a contract to the contracting parties (said to be privy to the contract). However, the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 introduced a number of allowances and exceptions for ius quaesitum tertio in English law. Other common-law countries are also making reforms in this area, though the United States is unique in abandoning privity early in the mid-19th century.
Ius quaesitum tertio
While the law on this subject varies, there is nonetheless a commonly accepted construction of third-party rights in the laws of most countries. A right of action arises only when it appears the object of the contract was to benefit the third party's interests and the third-party beneficiary has either relied on or accepted the benefit. A promisee nominates a third party usually for one of two reasons—either the promisee owes something to the third party and the performance of this new obligation will discharge it, or the promisee will somehow get a material benefit by giving something to the third party.
There are also two possible ways to explain the functioning of the contractual relationship: either,
The parties A (promisee) and B (promisor) contract each in his own name but with the intention of creating an opportunity for C (third-party beneficiary) to acquire a benefit, conditional upon acceptance, from B; or
C immediately acquires a conditional right, from which A is able to release B until the moment of acceptance, when the right of A to release B is extinguished.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Third-party beneficiary” is person who may have the right to sue on a contract, despite not having originally been a party to the contract. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Third-party, beneficiary and person, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4115028. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1999.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Third-party beneficiary” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.