Parties to long-term service contracts often face considerable uncertainty when signs emerge that the other party may not follow through on its obligations. At common law, a party may bring an action for anticipatory breach only when the other party’s repudiation is “clear, absolute, and unequivocal”. Courts have long demanded a high threshold for such a claim, in part to guard against frivolous accusations of breach based on mere suspicion or miscommunication. But this stringent standard gives rise to a critical practical dilemma: what should a party do when it reasonably suspects the other party is not going to perform, yet cannot point to any definitive repudiation? Suppose, for example, that a contractor repeatedly misses deadlines, stops responding to communications, and is rumored to be insolvent—but has not explicitly stated an intent not to perform. Has that party repudiated? Under traditional common law principles, perhaps not. But the aggrieved party is left in a perilous bind: do they continue investing time, money, and resources into a contract that may collapse, or do they terminate the agreement and risk being accused of breach themselves?
This is precisely the kind of commercial uncertainty that the Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 251 and Uniform Commercial Code § 2-609 aim to mitigate. (See Virginia Code § 8.2-609). These doctrines create a mechanism for managing contractual insecurity without requiring parties to wait helplessly for either full breach or explicit repudiation. Under both frameworks, when one party has “reasonable grounds for insecurity” regarding the other’s performance, it may demand “adequate assurance” that the other will fulfill its obligations. This is not a demand to terminate, but a demand for clarity. If the other party fails to provide such assurance within a “reasonable time”—defined by the U.C.C. as not to exceed thirty days—that failure itself may be treated as a repudiation. This shifts the analysis from one focused solely on the subjective intentions of the potentially breaching party, to one that also accounts for the objective commercial realities faced by the insecure party. It empowers the party to take protective measures—up to and including suspending performance—without having to meet the virtually unreachable threshold of proving an unequivocal anticipatory breach at common law.