Unmarried couple – Beneficial interest in property – Defendant owning property – Claimant moving in with defendant – Relationship later ending – Whether claimant acquiring beneficial interest in property – Whether defendant making relevant promise as to claimant owning a share – Claim dismissed
The claimant brought proceeding against the defendant in which she claimed a beneficial interest in his property, said to have been acquired between 1994 and 2005 when she was in a relationship with the defendant and living with him in the property. During that period, the claimant had continued to hold a tenancy of other premises from the local authority, initially a one-bedroom flat and then, from 1995, a two-bedroom house. The parties’ relationship had ended in 2005 as a result of an affair that the defendant had been conducting with another woman since 1999. The claimant had then moved into the three-bedroom house with her daughter from a previous relationship and the parties’ young son.
The claimant contended that she was entitled to the entire beneficial interest in the defendant’s property by reason of an alleged conversation in 1999, when she had first discovered that he was having an affair. She alleged that the defendant had begged her not to leave him and had agreed that if he ever betrayed her again or they separated, the property would be hers. In the alternative, she claimed a 50% share on the basis of alleged promises made by the defendant in 1995 and 1997.
Dismissing those claims in the court below, the judge found that the parties had never discussed the beneficial ownership of the property. He preferred the defendant’s evidence on the matter, having formed a low opinion of the claimant’s honesty in light of the fact that she had retained her local authority tenancy by pretending that she was still living at the demised premises and had continued to receive income support and housing benefit on that basis. He also accepted the defendant’s evidence that the claimant had forged letters from a potential employer in order to bolster a claim for damages arising out of a road traffic accident in 1997.
On appeal, the claimant contended that the judge’s view of her credibility was affected by his failure to appreciate that the defendant could have created the Word documents containing the letters and then backdated the creation date of the relevant file. She also sought to argue that the judge had been mistaken as to the way in which income from a shared business had been treated.
Held: The appeal was dismissed.
Although the issue of the letters had taken up a significant amount of time in the examination of both parties, it had not been critical to the judge’s assessment of the claimant’s credibility, and therefore to the question of whether he could accept her evidence about the alleged agreements with the defendant about the beneficial interest in the property. Although the judge’s preference for the defendant’s evidence was based in part on his understanding about the creation dates of the Word documents, his findings on that issue were simply corroborative of his impression of the claimant’s credibility that he had already formed from her dishonest dealings with the local authority.
Moreover, the judge’s reasons for rejecting the claimant’s allegations about what was said in 1995 were soundly based and did not depend solely on his view of her credibility. The judge had been entitled to conclude that, in the light of the recent history, a conversation of that kind was unlikely to have occurred. The evidence of a conversation later in 1997, which pre-supposed an earlier agreement of the kind rejected by the judge, then itself became highly improbable since its credibility was undermined by the judge’s other findings.
Permission was refused to add a further ground of appeal based on an alleged error by the judge in finding that funds from a shared business had been divided up, rather than banked and used as a shared fund. For the claimant to establish a claim to a beneficial interest in the property, which at the start of the relationship was in the sole beneficial ownership of the defendant, she had to show that there was an agreement or representation made by the defendant that she should become a joint beneficial owner, which she had relied on to her detriment so as to make it impossible for the defendant now to resile from what he had promised. The judge had been entitled to find that there was no such agreement; a mistake as to whether the money from the business was physically divided up or banked did not affect that issue. Moreover, where the defendant’s income from his regular employment was sufficient to meet the mortgage payments and other expenses relating to the property, and the claimant’s share of the business money was simply her contribution to living together as a family, that was insufficient to create the detriment necessary to set up an equity in the claimant’s favour.
The appellant appeared in person; Mr Rhys Jones (instructed by Duncan Lewis) appeared for the respondent.
Sally Dobson, barrister
