The latest developments in property cohabitation cases: where are we now, asks Frances Ratcliffe
In Stack v Dowden [2007] 2 AC 432, [2007] 2 All ER 929, the majority of the House of Lords disavowed the relevance of the presumption of resulting trust in cases concerning the beneficial interests in real property registered in the joint names of cohabitating couples for their joint occupation for domestic purposes. Rather, in the words of Baroness Hale, the search is to ascertain the parties’ shared intentions, actual, inferred or imputed with respect to the property in the light of their whole course of conduct in relation to it. Stack reiterated that the starting point in considering the apportionment of beneficial interests is that equity follows the law: so, in cases of sole legal ownership, the starting point is sole beneficial ownership, and in cases of joint legal ownership it is joint beneficial ownership. Moreover, cases of joint legal ownership where the beneficial interests are not shared equally will be “very unusual”. Stack was itself such a case,
