§ 8.01-256.As to rights and remedies existing when this chapter takes effect.

When Virginia enacted Chapter 4 as part of the 1977 recodification, it needed a rule for handling cases and claims that existed under the old law when the new chapter took effect on October 1, 1977. Section 8.01-256 is that rule. For any action, suit, scire facias, or other proceeding already pending before October 1, 1977, the chapter does not create a new bar; that pending matter stays subject to whatever limitation period, if any, would have applied had the chapter never been enacted.

The section extends the same protection to claims that existed but had not yet been filed. If a cause of action existed before October 1, 1977, and no proceeding on it was pending, the chapter does not apply to it, and the limitation period for that claim remains whatever it would have been under the prior law. Only where the chapter imposed a new limitation period, where none existed before, or a different one than existed before, does that new or different period apply — and even then, only to causes or rights of action accruing on or after October 1, 1977.

Together these rules keep the 1977 recodification from retroactively shortening or eliminating rights that litigants and claimants already held, while still letting the new chapter’s periods govern everything that arose afterward. Later sections throughout the chapter, including § 8.01-251(D) governing judgment enforcement, expressly cross-reference this section to make clear that its transition rule still applies to them.