Family and Marriage Laws

Family and Marriage Laws

Q. 1) Rights of Lauren under Resulting Trust, Constructive Trust and Proprietary Estoppels

Introduction

Over the past 15 years, there is a sharp increase in the number of cohabiting couples. This trend has significantly resulted in the costly and complex legal disputes when couples split up. According to the survey one out of four considers that cohabiting couple has the same legal rights as the married couples. Since the mid of 1990, the number of unmarried couples has increase twofold and the number of children living with unmarried couple has increased to 1.8 million in 2012 comparing it with that of 1996's 0.9 million. Involvement of children and property further complicate the already confused cohabitation arrangements. Since last two decades the things have changed but unfortunately English law could not accommodate these changes and there is dire need of addressing these changes and enactment of the law with reference to cohabitation is requirement of the law.

In the break downs of cohabiting couples, there is very little safety and protection for the weaker one and most of the time it is women who become the victim of cohabitation issues and in most cases they have children. Therefore some cohabiting families found it very difficult to break up the relation when children are involved. Things are easy to manage when couple enters into relation through civil partnership and problems arise can be effectively dealt with the help of Matrimonial Cause Act of 1973 and The Civil Partnership Act 2004. These two important pieces of legislation have provisions that allow the court to reach the result which is fair to both parties. When court decides the cases pertaining to cohabitation arrangement, it is interested only in trust law and deciding on the basis of trust law may sometimes result in unfair decision.

Doctrine of Resulting trust

There are some situations in which the property is regarded as the subject of the trust despite there is no expressed intentions on the side of settler. In English law, there are two main categories of informal trusts and resulting trusts are one of therm. Under the current English law, there are two places of circumstances which arises the use of resulting trusts. The first situation is given below.

Situation where X makes a voluntary payments to Y or wholly or partially pays for the purchase of a property which is entitled to Y alone or in a situation of joint property in the names of X and Y. In this situation it is presumed that X has no intention to gift the property to Y; the property or money is believed on trust for X (if he/she provides solely the amount of money) or in the circumstances of a joint purchaser by X or Y in their proportionate share according to their contribution. It is important to note that this case is constructed only on presumption which can be rebutted by the strong counter arguments by the advancement of ...