Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Spring 2024 #194The court was concerned with the claim of Richard and Adrian Winter to challenge the dispositions made by their father, Albert Winter, in his will dated 30 April 2015 (the 2015 will) which left the residue of his estate to their brother, Philip. The principal asset in Albert’s estate was his share in a market garden business operated by the family for many years, and since 1998 as a partnership between Albert, his late wife Brenda, the claimants and the first defendant. In January 2004 the partnership business was transferred to a company.
The claim was put on two principal bases....
Natasha Dzameh examines the lessons from the Supreme Court’s judgment in Guest, which looked at the pivotal question of remedies The court cannot give a claimant more than the promised expectation whether by way of the amount or accelerated receipt. Where acceleration occurs, a discount must be built in to reflect the early receipt. The …
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Mark Pawlowski considers the interrelationship between proprietary estoppel and secret trusts To what extent is it open to a testator to change their will or revoke the instructions they have given to their secret trustee so as to frustrate the expectations of the secret beneficiary? The answer to this question depends on whether the secret …
Continue reading "Trusts: Hush money"
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Winter 2018 #170The deceased was a self-made man who had operated a farming business and a haulage company in partnership with his wife (the third defendant) and his son (the claimant). Over the course of his life, he purchased a number of parcels of agricultural land in Dorset. In 2007 he gave two of these parcels to one of his daughters (the first defendant). In 2009 the partnership dissolved, and the deceased transferred one of the parcels to himself and the third defendant to hold jointly. At the same time the claimant was given one of the parcels and the haulage business.
The deceased died i...
Rebecca Cattermole highlights the current position on the doctrine of estoppel in the context of recent case law ‘It was a useful working hypothesis to take a sliding scale by which the clearer the expectation, the greater the detriment.’ The case of Moore v Moore [2016] is the most recent illustration of the treatment of …
Continue reading "Proprietary Estoppel: Down on the farm"
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | November 2016 #164Tegwyn and Mary Davies purchased a dairy farm known as Henllan in West Wales in 1972. It comprised a farmhouse, an attached cottage, outbuildings, and 182 acres of land. It was farmed with a nearby farm also owned by them known as Caeremlyn which they had purchased in 1961 (together ‘the farm’). The respondent, Eirian was one of their three daughters. By 1989, she was the only child left at the farm. She had a passionate interest in pedigree milking cows which was the main business of the farm, and it was by this stage clear that she was the only possible candidate to take it over. In th...
William Batstone examines the Court of Appeal decision in Davies v Davies [2016] ‘Detriment need not be quantifiable financial detriment, but it must be substantial and it must be weighed against any countervailing benefits.’ Tegwyn and Mary Davies have farmed in West Carmarthenshire since 1961 and they continue to do so now in their mid-seventies. …
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | September 2016 #162The appeal concerned a proprietary estoppel claim by the respondent, Eirian, with respect to her parents’ pedigree dairy farm.
Eirian’s claim was precipitated by the fact that her parents had sought to evict her from the farmhouse where she was living. Eirian had worked on Henllan during lengthy periods of her adult life. There were a number of arguments between Eirian and her parents which had, on occasion, led to Eirian temporarily leaving the farm. During one such period she worked as a technician for a company called Genus, which specialised in livestock reproduction services....
William Batstone examines Davies v Davies [2015], in which a farmer’s son secured the freehold of the farm that his father had encouraged him to make his life’s work by promises that it would eventually be his ‘If James had been made aware of his father’s wishes in 1999, when he was in his early …
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Michael Gouriet and Jemma Thomas report on the basis in which an interest in property may be secured by proprietary estoppel ‘The detriment suffered need not be financial but must be substantial, and must be judged at the point when the person who gave the assurance seeks to renege on it.’ Establishing an equitable interest …
Continue reading "Equitable Interests: Showing an interest"
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