John Summers & Elizabeth Fitzgerald examine two recent judgments that challenge long-established property law rules
Trusts of the family home are the common law’s itch that won’t go away. When will residential property owned in one person’s name, or in more than one name, nevertheless respectively be owned in equity jointly, or on some basis other than as joint tenants? The question is pressing as the number of unmarried couples who acquire property without giving clear thought, or expression, to its ownership, rockets.
Beneficial interests
In Stack v Dowden [2007] UKHL 17, [2007] 2 AC 432 the House of Lords went some way towards relaxing the rules governing the assessment of beneficial interests. Lady Hale’s judgment adopted a holistic approach to the assessment of certain claims to shared beneficial ownership. The nature of that holistic enquiry has now been examined by the Supreme Court in Jones v Kernott [2011] UKSC 53, [2011] All ER (D) 64 (Nov).
Stack: a recap
Stack concerned a property held in joint names by an unmarried couple. Both parties were responsible
