Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Spring 2024 #194James Morris (the settlor), a Labour Party councillor and businessman, settled two trusts (the trusts). This claim concerned the validity of the trusts, their rectification, a proprietary estoppel claim by a beneficiary, and the consequences of the trusts’ invalidity.
The first trust concerned Morris Hall, Bellstone Court, Bellstone, Shrewsbury (the hall), which Mr Morris transferred to himself and three others to hold pursuant to a declaration of trust dated 5 April 1934 (the hall trust).
Clause 1(g) of the hall trust provided:
‘After making provision fo...
Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Summer 2022 #187W was the founder of WBL, an internationally renowned publisher of children’s books. In 1989 W instructed solicitors to create an employee trust (WBET) for WBL and transferred 51% of the WBL shares into WBET. The remainder of the shares were divided amongst family trusts established by W.
W died in 1991 and the shares in WBL held by the family trusts were distributed to employees and officers of WBL through a qualifying employee share ownership trust and a share incentive plan. Some of those shares were acquired from employees by the WBL Employee Share Ownership Plan (ESOP).
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Summer 2022 #187By a trust instrument dated 29 April 1986 (the 1986 deed), Stephenson Clarke Shipping Ltd, a subsidiary of Powell Duffryn plc and member of the Powell Duffryn group of companies (the PD Group), as the named settlor, settled cash and securities on a discretionary trust for the benefit of employees and former employees of the PD Group (the trust). The trust defined the beneficiaries as ‘the employees and their spouses and dependants and the former employees and their spouses from time to time during the trust period [being the period expiring eighty years from the date of the trust] of the...
Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Winter 2021 #185Between 2011 and 2013, the claimant obtained multiple charging orders in respect of five properties registered in the joint names of Mr and Mrs Dua. The Duas occupied four of the properties as a single residence, known together as ‘Fulmer House’. The other was a separate property known as 49 Sudbury Avenue.
The Duas had purchased 49 Sudbury Avenue in 1987 and occupied it as their family home until 2004. The purchase had been funded by a mortgage and the Duas’ evidence was that Mr Dua alone had made the mortgage payments. In 1992/93 and 1995, there were two major extensions to 49 S...
Kayleigh Biswas sets out the issues encountered in Derhalli v Derhalli, where the delayed sale of a former matrimonial home led to a plethora of litigation To ascertain the meaning of an order, the court would need to consider what a reasonable person, having all the background knowledge, would have understood the order to mean, …
Continue reading "Consent orders: A matter of interpretation"
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The Court of Appeal has reversed a controversial line of case law on the rectification of contracts where both parties are mistaken about a contract’s legal effect, as Oliver Saunders finds out ‘The Court of Appeal conducted a review of the historic case law on rectification beginning with the traditional equitable jurisdiction to correct mistakes …
Continue reading "Rectification of common mistake: Welcome pragmatism"
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Summer 2019 #175The First Defendant sought to rectify two declarations of trust entered into by the Claimant and the deceased husband of the First Defendant (“Mr Saundry”) in 2006 and 2009. The trusts arose out of a residential property business operated by Mr Saundry and the deceased husband of the Claimant (“Mr Price”).
Both of the declarations of trust related to a large number of properties, which were legally held in Mr Saundry’s sole name, but according to the declarations of trust were beneficially owned as tenants in common in equal shares by Mr Saundry and the Claimant.
The 2006 d...
Sapna Garg examines a recent case on contractual interpretation ‘What can we take from this case? It is a trite point, but surely there is no clearer illustration of how failing to draft a contract clearly and unambiguously can land the parties in a lengthy and costly dispute.‘ At the start of a new business …
Continue reading "Construction: Dubious drafting"
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