Legal Definitions - contemporaneous construction

Definition: Contemporaneous construction refers to an interpretation given at or near the time when a writing was prepared, usually by one or more people involved in its preparation.

Example: A contract is written between two parties, and they both have different interpretations of a particular clause. If they both agree on a certain interpretation at the time of signing the contract, it is considered a contemporaneous construction.

This means that the interpretation given at the time of signing the contract is considered the correct one, even if it differs from what the words in the contract might suggest. This is because the parties involved in the contract are the best judges of what they meant when they wrote it.