“Just as the starting point where there is sole legal ownership is sole beneficial ownership, the starting point where there is joint legal ownership is joint beneficial ownership. The onus is upon the person seeking to show that the beneficial ownership is different from the legal ownership, so in sole ownership cases it is upon the non-owner to show that he has any interest at all. In joint ownership cases it is upon the joint owner who claims to have other than a joint beneficial interest.”
“The issue as it has been framed before us is whether a conveyance into joint names indicates only that each party is intended to have some beneficial interest but says nothing about the nature and extent of that beneficial interest or whether a conveyance into joint names establishes a prima facie case of joint and equal beneficial interests until the contrary is shown. For the reasons already stated, at least in the domestic consumer context a conveyance into joint names indicates both legal and beneficial joint tenancy unless and until the contrary is proved.”
“The burden will therefore be on the person seeking to show that the parties did intend their beneficial interests to be different from their legal interests and in what way. This is not a task to be lightly embarked upon. In family disputes, strong feelings are aroused when couples split up. These often lead the parties, honestly but mistakenly, to reinterpret the past in self-exculpatory or vengeful terms. They also lead people to spend far more on the legal battle than is warranted by the sums actually at stake. A full examination of the facts is likely to involve disproportionate costs. In joint names cases it is also unlikely to lead to a different result unless the facts are very unusual. Nor may disputes be confined to the parties themselves. People with an interest in the deceased’s estate may well wish to assert that he had a beneficial tenancy in common cannot be the case that all the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of transfers into joint names using the old forms are vulnerable to challenge in the courts simply because it is likely that the owners contributed unequally to their purchase. 69. In law ‘context is everything’ and the domestic context is very different from the commercial world. Each case will turn on its own facts. Many more factors than financial contributions may be relevant to divining the parties’ true intentions. These include any advice or discussions at the time of the transfer which cast light upon their intentions then, the reasons why the home was acquired in their joint names, the reasons why (if it be the case) the survivor was require to give a receipt for the capital monies, the purpose for which the home was acquired, the nature of the parties’ relationship, whether they had children for whom they both had responsibility to provide a home, how the purchase was financed, both initially and subsequently, how the parties arranged their finances, whether separately or together or a bit of both, how they discharged their outgoings on the property and their other household expenses. When a couple are joint owners of their home and jointly liable for the mortgage, the inferences to be drawn from who pays for what may be very different from the inferences to be drawn when only one is owner of the home. The arithmetical calculation of how much was paid by each is also likely to be less important. It would be easier to draw the inference that they intended that each should contribute as much to the household as they reasonably could and that they would share the eventual benefit or burden equally. The parties’ individual characters and personalities may also be a factor in deciding where their true intentions lay. In the cohabitation context mercenary considerations may be more to the fore than they would be in marriage but it should not be assumed that they always take pride of place over natural love and affection. At the end of the day, having taken all this into account, cases in which the joint legal owners are to be taken to have intended that their beneficial interests should be different from their legal interests will be very unusual.”
“It is always salutary to be confronted with the ambiguities which later emerge in what seemed at the time to be comparatively clear language. The primary search must always be for what the parties actually intended, to be deduced objectively from their words and their actions. If that can be discovered, then, as Mr Nicholas Strauss QC pointed out in the High Court, it is not open to a court to impose a solution upon them in contradiction to those intentions merely because the court considers it fair to do so. In a case such as this, where the parties already share the beneficial interest and the question is what their interests are and whether their interests have changed, the court will try to deduce what their actual intentions were at the relevant time. It cannot impose a solution upon them which is contrary to what the evidence shows that they actually intended. If it cannot deduce exactly what shares were intended, it may have no alternative but to say what their intentions as reasonable and just people would have been, had they thought about it at the time. This is a fallback position which some courts may not welcome but the court has a duty to come to a conclusion on the dispute put before it. In this case there is no need to impute an intention that the parties’ beneficial interests would change because the judge made a finding that the intentions of the parties did in fact change.”
“The clear direction given by the Supreme Court and the House of Lords is that in these types of cases they are not commercial disputes and the court looks at the matters more broadly. That is the clear implication of the wording of Baroness Hale in the passage that I have referred to. She talks about it being very unusual for there to be a case where one adopts a different approach to the straightforward approach but in my view in this case it is a very unusual case because of the very short period of time between the date of the transfer and the breakdown of the marriage and that requires the court to examine the reasons behind the breakdown of the marriage and what the intentions of the parties were in the run up to that breakdown.”
“What was the claimant’s intention in respect of the purchase of the property?”
“It seems to me that doing the best I can on all of the evidence, on the balance of probabilities, that the claimant had come to the position that he wanted, essentially, his share of those contributions recognised. His belief was that the marriage had essentially failed and they were living together but not as a couple, that he wanted that to be protected and his keenness to get the transaction completed whilst, as I say, the initial thoughts were probably in connection with the family, that his keenness in getting that transaction completed were entirely driven because of his view about the imbalance in terms of contributions coming up to that time …6. For those reasons I come to the conclusion that having looked at all the evidence in this case there was a clear lack of agreement about what then legal interest should be and if the clear intention or if that knowledge had been available to the defendant at that time she would never have concluded this transaction. Indeed, as she said, she would have carried on renting.”
‘is there evidence on which I can determine the parties’ intentions at the time that the conveyance was entered into, as to the beneficial shares in which the property should be held?’