Losing the farm in a family feud

• How courts satisfy the equity in proprietary estoppel cases.
• Explores three recent Court of Appeal cases where parties fell out over the family farm.

Farming families have given rise to a rich vein of proprietary estoppel cases, and the question of how to satisfy the equity in such cases is often particularly troublesome. Lessons can be drawn from three such cases which reached the Court of Appeal in recent years, Davies v Davies [2016] EWCA Civ 463; Moore v Moore [2018] EWCA Civ 2669 and Habberfield v Habberfield [2019] EWCA Civ 890.

The legal principles which apply in proprietary estoppel cases are, save for a controversy about the aim to be achieved when seeking to satisfy the equity, fairly well established, and they were encapsulated by Lord Justice Lewison at para [38] of Davies. In short:

(i)The ingredients necessary to raise an equity are (a) an assurance of sufficient clarity;