Land

Conveyancing - unqualified transfer for no value - no resulting trust in favour of donorLohia and anor v Lohia: ChD (Mr Nicholas Strauss QC sitting as a deputy judge of the Chancery Division): 7 July 2000

A father and his elder son bought a property in London but the son transferred his interest in the property to his father during his father's lifetime.

The father, who was registered as sole proprietor of the property, died intestate.

The son claimed that he and his father had owned the property as beneficial tenants in common in equal shares and that since the transfer had been for no value a resulting trust had arisen in his favour, so that the father had a beneficial interest in only half the property at his death.

The younger son sought a declaration that the father was sole beneficial owner when he died, that the whole property was therefore included in their father's estate and that the two brothers should therefore hold the property as beneficial tenants in common.

The younger son then died during the course of the litigation and his executors were substituted as claimants.

William Geldart (instructed by Harman Garfinkle & Co) for the claimant.

Rajinder Kumar Sahonte (instructed by Raymond Saul & Co) for the defendant.

Held, finding for the claimants, that on a plain reading of s.60(3) of the Law of Property Act 1925 the presumption that a resulting trust arose on an unqualified voluntary conveyance had been abolished; that s.60(3) provided that a conveyance for no value meant what it said and it was not necessary to add additional words to make it effective; that a person seeking to establish a resulting trust had to prove it; that the defendant had not done so and the voluntary conveyance had been effective to make the father sole beneficial owner at his death; and that, accordingly, the beneficial interest in the property was therefore held on trust, half for the beneficiaries of the estate of the younger son and half for the elder son.