Section 2 of the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989 imposes strict requirements in respect of contracts for the sale or disposition of interests in land. All such contracts must be made in writing and must be signed by or on behalf of the parties. But section 2(5) excepts implied, resulting and constructive trusts from these requirements.
The relationship between section 2(5) and the law of proprietary estoppel is unclear. However, in cases where a strict application of section 2 would cause injustice, the court will sometimes uphold a claim that a landowner has made promises or assurances, upon which the promisee has relied, to his or her detriment, thereby creating a proprietary estoppel in his or her favour.
Wills v Sowray [2020] EWHC 939 (Ch) concerned a farm near Harrogate consisting of approximately 50 acres, comprising grazing land, a farmhouse and various barns and outbuildings. The landowner died intestate and the farmhouse and land passed to his daughter, Claire, from whom he had been estranged (because his wife had left him before her birth) until approximately six years before his death.
The claimants were brothers, who had been longstanding friends of the deceased. Both made claims against the deceased’s estate based on proprietary estoppel. James claimed that he and the deceased had agreed to swap a jeep for a small plot of land, which was in poor condition, on which James subsequently installed a mobile log cabin that became his home. The deceased had explained that the land was mortgaged to a third party. So it could not be transferred to James immediately, but would be left to James in the deceased’s will. And Matthew, who enjoyed a close relationship with the deceased, claimed that the deceased had promised him that he could use the farmland while he was alive and that it would eventually be his – and he had looked after it, and the deceased, for many years. Indeed, he had once expected to inherit the farmhouse too, but had accepted that the deceased had subsequently decided that Claire should inherit the house.
The judge accepted that the brothers had relied on the promises made to them to their detriment. Furthermore, although the House of Lords’ decision in Yeoman’s Row Management Ltd v Cobbe [2008] UKHL 55 cast doubt on whether the doctrine of proprietary estoppel could ever be used to sidestep section 2 in commercial cases, the deceased had enjoyed a quasi-familial relationship with the brothers. Consequently, the judge felt able to apply the decision in Thorner v Majors [2009] UKHL 18; [2009] 2 EGLR 111, in which the House of Lords upheld an inheritance claim on the ground that the doctrine of proprietary estoppel remains relevant to claims that are familial in nature.
So it was no answer for Claire to rely on section 2. The brothers had acquired proprietary rights in equity and it would be unconscionable to allow her to enforce her statutory inheritance rights as against them. The judge went on to rule that the existence of a failed contract – in this case a contract to leave land by will – does not prevent an equity by estoppel arising. Consequently, the judge ruled that James was entitled to the plot of land on which his home stood and that Matthew was entitled to the farmland (but not the farmhouse and its garden).
Allyson Colby, property law consultant
