Constructive Trust Case Study

Constructive trusts of the family home have debated origins; however, many argue it has been adapted from Denning’s ideology of the ‘deserted wife’s equity’. The case of Gissing v Gissing stated that a constructive trust is where there is a common intention between landowner and claimant that the claimant is to have interest in property, and claimant has acted to his/her detriment in reliance on that agreement, then the landowner holds the property as trustee for claimant or, more often, for the two of them together. Constructive trusts within the family home has been used as a flexible remedy to meet a fair result however there has been debates as to whether legislation is needed to enforce a more certain rule of law. In this essay, I will

This shows the law as fair as they have explicitly agreed amongst themselves. Rosset two cases are however, much less straightforward. In cases of sole legal ownership, the courts adopt a ‘more holistic approach’ where they will look at the whole course of relationship and parties’ behaviour, this was shown in the case of Midland Bank v Cooke. Cases of joint legal ownership has been outlined in the case of Stack v Dowden. In this case, Baroness Hale who gave the leading judgement stated that the starting presumption is that ‘Equity follows the law’ but In rare cases, this may be rebutted as she stated that ‘context is everything’, this shows the law to be much more flexible and fair than that of a resulting trust where the cohabitants will only receive the money they put in, which could be seen as unfair in a power imbalance relationship. In this case the courts rebutted the presumption however they stated this is unusual. This indicates the law is fair and flexible as in exceptional cases the courts will rebut the presumption. The case of Jones v Kernott re emphasised the fact that equity should follow the law. The court stated in this case that where the court cannot infer and intention they may impute one. Lord Kerr stated this was eminently fair and Lord Collins stated that the courts are courts of law, but they are also courts of justice’. This also shows fairness in the law as the courts are willing to impute an intention to allow for justice to prevail in exceptional