Defendant claiming title to house by adverse possession – House at all material times forming part of unadministered estate of earlier owner – Parties presumptively entitled to one-quarter share each – Plaintiffs claiming that time had not begun to run before 1998 grant of letters of representation – Judge ruling in favour of plaintiffs – Defendant’s appeal dismissed
The three plaintiffs and the defendant’s late husband (W) were the children of Mary Hartley, who died intestate in November 1983, leaving very few assets other than a farmhouse and land in Yorkshire (the property). W was living at the property at the time of his mother’s death and continued to do so. The defendant moved into the property in 1992 and married W in 1995. W died in November 1995, having bequeathed his entire estate (including his entitlement under his mother’s intestacy) to the defendant, who continued to reside on the property.
In January 1998 the plaintiffs obtained a grant of letters of administration to their mother’s estate and shortly thereafter instituted proceedings asserting their beneficial entitlement to a quarter-share of the property. The defendant, relying on the occupation since 1983 of W and herself, counterclaimed for a declaration that she had acquired possessory title under the Limitation Act 1980. The trial judge ruled against the defendant on the ground that no cause of action, capable of being extinguished under the Act, had arisen at any material time. That ruling was based on para 9 of Schedule 1 to the Act, which provides that, where land is in the possession of a person entitled to a beneficial interest in the land or proceeds of sale thereof, no right of action for its recovery shall be treated as accruing to any trustee or any other person beneficially entitled. The defendant appealed, contending that those provisions could not apply during the (pre-grant) period that the estate of the deceased was vested, by operation of the (unamended) Administration of Estates Act 1925, in the President of the Family Division of the High Court.
Held: The appeal was dismissed
1. By seeking to exclude from para 9 a person presumptively entitled to a share in an unadminisstered estate, the defendant was inviting the court to adopt an unnecessarily narrow and artificial interpretation of that provision and its statutory predecessors, the purpose of which was to do away with the notion of non-adverse possession. The reality was that the defendant’s late husband was occupying the property against his own interest therein: Paradise Beach & Transportation Co v Price-Robinson [1968] 2 WLR 873; Commissioner for Stamp Duties (Queensland) v Livingston [1965] AC 694; Re Leigh’s Will Trusts [1970] Ch 277 considered
2. Nor was the defendant assisted by section 26 of the 1980 Act, which excluded from computation any interval of time between death and the grant of letters of administration, as that did not apply to a case where time had not started to run before the death in question.
Barry Coulter (instructed by Ursula Bagnall & Co, of Totnes) appeared for the plaintiffs; Paul Creaner (instructed by Waddington & Son, of Burnley) appeared for the defendant.
Alan Cooklin, barrister
