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Imputing intention and the family home

Date:7 MAR 2016
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Barrister and Professor of Property Law
This article seeks to address the question whether it is possible to impute to the parties a common intention to share beneficial ownership in the family home at the acquisition or change of intention stage of establishing a constructive trust in single and joint ownership cases.

The article examines a number of first instance and Court of Appeal decisions since the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Jones v Kernott [2011] UKSC 53 [2012] 1 FLR 45 which appear to accept a process of imputation at only the second (assessment) stage of the analysis.

Interestingly however in Jones itself Lord Wilson left open the possibility of allowing the common intention required at the first stage to be imputed if it was not otherwise identifiable by express discussions or inferred from the parties’ whole course of conduct. Most recently also Mostyn J in Bhura v Bhura (No 2) [2014] EWHC 727 (Fam) [2015] 1 FLR 153 when rehearsing the applicable principles summarised the effect of Jones by essentially collapsing the traditional two-stage analysis into just one question of identifying the parties’ common intention by...

Read the full article here.