Property Ownership

Whose house is it anyway?

Martin Bloggs, a single man, bought a house. Afterward, he met Willa, and two years later, she moved in with him. A few years after that, they had a child, and then another. They never married. They never changed the title deeds (Martin was the sole owner). He paid the mortgage but she ran the household and paid some of the bills.

Who owns the house? In the past, Martin's ownership might have been undisputed. Today, such questions are no longer airtight.

In late 2011 several court cases involving home ownership made headlines. One involved a couple who bought a house jointly but many years later - long after the man moved out and their children had grown up - he asked for his half share. His former girlfriend's refusal led to four court cases and a shocking result, one with implications for the many couples - perhaps two million or more - in similar circumstances.

Former cricketer Geoff Boycott took centre-stage in a case in which the joint owner of their jointly owned house switched the ownership to a tenancy in common. Although Boycott had put up all the money to buy the house, when his girlfriend died, her share - which had grown considerably over the years - went to her heirs. And Boycott went to court.

Yet another case involved a change of ownership that was delayed so long that one of the parties became mentally incapacitated - and what might have been a smooth and clear process became muddied and costly.

Anthony and Jennifer Grubb

The divorce between chartered surveyor Anthony and Jennifer Grubb was notable for the large sums of money involved, much of it inherited by the husband.

Anthony Arbuthnot Watkins Grubb, to give him his full name, argued that he should retain most of the £12m estate because he had inherited most of it. The couple separated in 2009 after 26 years of marriage; one of their five children was still a minor.

The Court of Appeal awarded her £4.4 million, including £75,000 a year in child maintenance, one of the two family homes, a roughly similar amount to renovate it, and £1.65m in cash. Her property is a nine-bedroom 40-acre country house in East Sussex with tennis court, swimming pool and woodlands worth c.£2m.

The husband kept the other house, in West Sussex, which he might have to sell to fulfil the divorce terms.

Kernott and Jones: Time and trouble:

When Leonard Kernott split up from Patricia Jones eight years after they started living together, he could have demanded his half-share of their house at that time. But they had two small children, so he waited until the youngest was at least 18 years old.

During that time, their home, in Thundersley, Essex, rose in value from the £30,000 they paid in 1985 to c.£245,000 by the time their dispute reached the courts. And despite the house being jointly owned, the Supreme Court determined that his ownership was less than half - much less.

The Court reasoned that each contributed different amounts of money, and in different ways. She paid the initial deposit of £6,000 (raising the funds by selling her mobile home), whereas he did some of the construction work himself when they extended the property.

He also provided the funds out of which they ran the household - including payments on their £24,000 mortgage. But after he moved out, he had to pay his own mortgage, whilst Patricia raised the family and paid the mortgage on her own. For the deposit on his house, the couple cashed in their joint life insurance policy and shared the proceeds.

The youngest of their two children was born in 1986. The couple never married.

They separated in 1993 and put the house on the market for c.£70,000 but it did not sell.

In 2006 Leonard asked for a half-share of the property, which was valued at £205,000 in 2008 and £245,000 a few years later.

Instead of selling and handing over £120,000 to Leonard, Patricia went to Southend County Court and argued that due to her payments, he was entitled to only ten per cent of the property's value. The Court agreed.

Leonard appealed to the High Court but was unsuccessful. He then applied to the Court of Appeal, which did decide in his favour. She then went to the Supreme Court, which reinstated the 90-10 split.

The Court based its decision on the shared intentions of the couple - intentions that may or may not have been expressed explicitly.

Pilkington and Masterson: Time and more trouble

In 2001, after cohabiting for more than 20 years, Mr Pilkington stayed and Mrs Masterson moved out of a property they owned jointly.

Seven years later, Mr Pilkington moved into a care home and needed to sell the house to fund his care. His solicitors advised him to sever the beneficial joint tenancy, and they served written notice on Masterson to that effect.

However, they were not sure that their letters reached her. In addition, Mr Pilkington was suffering from dementia, and the Court of Protection appointed his sister to act as his deputy (Mrs Masterson was authorised to sell the house). Then, with the house ownership still unresolved, Mr Pilkington died.

The High Court noted that, even if the letters failed to reach Mrs Masterson, other forms of communication might have had the same effect. In the Court of Protection proceedings, Mrs Masterson had agreed that she would split the proceeds of the house sale 50-50 with Mr Pilkington's heirs. The Court accepted this agreement as the basis for determining that the couple's ownership arrangement was a tenancy in common, not joint tenancy.

Geoff Boycott Stumped

Former cricketer Geoff Boycott learned the distinction between joint tenancies and tenancies in common the hard way. He bought a house in Poole Harbour for Anne Wyatt, his longtime girlfriend in 1996.

She continued to live in the house even after their romantic involvement ended. Nevertheless, having apparently paid for the house entirely by himself, he also apparently thought he was the sole owner.

Initially Boycott and Wyatt owned the house jointly so that, if she died, he would become sole owner. And vice versa. However, she changed the ownership from joint tenants to tenants in common - a change he did not challenge although he was aware of it. When she died in 2009, aged 82, her half of the house went to her heirs. If the house had still been jointly owned, full ownership would  have passed to Boycott. Wyatt would not have been able to leave the house in full or in part to her heirs, even in a will.

Poole Harbour proved to be a good investment. By the time the Boycott-Wyatt spat boiled over, the house was worth several million pounds.

Boycott sued the solicitors who handled the purchase, wanting to argue that they should have provided him with a better explanation of the different forms of ownership. But he never got to have his day in court - more precisely, he did have his day in court only to be told that he had applied too late. Too much time had elapsed between Wyatt changing the agreement in 2007 and Boycott filing his suit, which was declared out of time in October 2011.