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  1. If I had had an apple, I would have had to have eaten it.

  2. If he had not earned much then they wouldn't have had to have been to the US.

Is the usage of "would have had to have" correct in the above sentences?

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    Yes. But that doesn't make for a very good answer. Why do you think they are incorrect? Yes/no questions don't give us much to explain.
    – Catija
    Commented May 3, 2016 at 18:30
  • I just wanted to be aware if I am right.
    – vinnieflores9000
    Commented May 3, 2016 at 18:32

2 Answers 2

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The sentences may be "correct" in that they can be analyzed as having valid structure (and particularly tenses). (But actually I'm not sure about that...)

However, I find them hard to understand, perhaps meaningless, and definitely unlikely to be encountered in written or spoken language.

Are you trying to express some thought, or to find a way to use the sequence "would have had to have", or something else?

I think in both cases the final "perfect" part can be switched to "simple and convey the same message more clearly:

  1. If I had had an apple, I would have had to eat it.
  2. If he had not earned much then they wouldn't have had to be in the US.

But maybe I'm missing something.

The sequence "would have had to have" seems more suitable for cases where the final "have" is used as a simple verb (rather than part of a perfect tense):

"If we had lived in the suburbs, we would have had to have a car".

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    If the statement is "If you have an apple, you have to eat it"... then the person reporting that after the fact, would have needed to say "I didn't have an apple but if I had had [one], I would have had to have eaten it."
    – Catija
    Commented May 3, 2016 at 18:59
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    @Catija, I don't see why you should double the perfect adpect here. What's the difference from "I didn't have an apple but if I had had [one], I would have had to eat it" ? The latter is the classic "3rd conditional" with past perfect. Does "had to have eaten it" carry a dfferent message?
    – laugh salutes Monica C
    Commented May 3, 2016 at 21:28
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Why do you use present perfect tense after "had to" in the secound clause? You know, this tense can be used to refer to an action started in past and countinued to now, or for talking about the result of an action happened and finished in past. For example If you lose your keys and at night you come back home and want to open the door and you cannot find them, you would say "I habe lost my keys." Another usage of this tense is when you talk about an event happened in past but you don't give the exact time for it, i.e. , like ysterday or tow hours ago. In this situation you should use this tense.

But in your sentences I cannot find any of the above usages. So it cannot be correct to say such sentences.

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