Land Law - Rose and Paul Marriage Case

Rose and Paul are married and lives in a house and both their names are registered as joint tenants. George, who is Rose’s father, stayed in a flat nearby to Rose and Paul and often, went over to their house for meals and both Rose and Paul helped him with jobs around the flat. When George’s health began to fail him, he sold off his flat and move in with Rose and Paul. When the flat was sold off, the proceed of sales of the flat was given to Paul, which he then used it to build an extension to the house and used part of the money to redeem the mortgage. After Rose death, Paul had told George to leave the house. The issue now is can Paul evict George without reasonable notice, and this means that George will not be given any notice to prepare and to find another place to live at, which given the reasonable time notice which is usually 1 months to 6 months’ time period [Mehta v Royal Bank of Scotland (1999)] at will and does George retain an interest in the property? Would he be a licensee at best and if so what type of license category will he fall under?

Before Rose passed away, both Rose and Paul names are on the title deed and they both have legal interest to the house as they are registered as joint tenants and their name will appear on the land register, whereby each owner will hold the whole property jointly with the other partner and ‘right of survivorship’ will apply. In this case it means that if A and B are joint tenant and upon the death of A, A’s interest in the property will be automatically be passed on to B, which means upon the death of Rose, Paul will be the sole owner of the property due to the ‘right of survivorship’ act.

Since George’s name is not on the title deed this means he has no legal interest in the property, this is where equitable interest takes place for him [ Williams & Glyns Bank v Boland (1980) ] or [ Ferrishurst Ltd v Wallicte Ltd (1999) ]. It is where an occupier whose name does not show up on the title deed i.e. appears “off the land register” and might have some rights in equity, examples; justice, fairness and good conscience, and the 3 principle that must be taken note off is mirror principle which is where it reflects every detail of the property i.e. name and description, curtain principle which is the hidden interest i.e. trust and insurance principle which is the last one principle and this is where compensation is made. Even thou George is not a legal interest like Rose and Paul, the law will steps in to mitigate the sternness of the situation.

On the other hand, the fact that now George is living with Paul, Paul now holds the property on trust on behalf of George since the passing of Rose’s death.

Trust is a mechanism or device in land law to support the interest of the beneficiary, i.e. a 2 party trust or 3 party trusts. In this case, since Rose had passed on, it is between both Paul and George only and hence this will result in a 2 party trust with Paul being the owner and trustee and George as the beneficiary [Paul v Constance (1977)]. There are two types of trust and they are resulting trust and constructive trust. Resulting trust is just the surface and it is where you get back the money that you put into the purchase price of the property which is usually the direct financial contribution, i.e. you will only get back $50k from the $100k property, as initially you put in only $50k in the property [Laskar v Laskar (2009)] or [Arogundade v Arogundade ( 2005 ) ]. However resulting trust does not apply to the case given, as George did not put in any money to the purchase price of the property and usually resulting trust are unfair, unless the property is for investment purpose only, and this is where constructive trust steps in, it is the second type of trust there is and it is normally used by the courts when resulting trust does not deliver a fair outcome and it is normally the indirect contribution, i.e. the court might look beyond direct contributions, for example repair work, helping out with chores, maintenance of the house, renovation, etc. Not only that, there are a few factors that needs to be consider too and they are duration of relationship and the nature of their relationship.