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Is a properly completed TR1 definitive in a cohabitation dispute?
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‘Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game.’ (Bob Dylan Hurricane)
While Bob was singing about deeper matters than who owned a share of another’s house at the end of an unmarried relationship the above line sometimes has resonance to me when trying to explain to a former cohabitant how they may (or may not) have a claim over their former cohabitee’s property when that property is jointly owned. It also arises when advising a client whether there is a way to absolutely bind a cohabitee so that no future claim can be made in respect of a property owned by one party in an unmarried relationship.
The three seminal cases of
Stack v Dowden Jones v Kernott and
Oxley v Hiscock involving considerable judicial input at the highest levels were supposed to clarify the uncertainty that arose at the end of such relationships in terms of the beneficial ownership of property. However as we can see from
Andrew Commin’s article on inference and imputation the result has been a rather unsatisfactory...
Read the full article here.
