The Student Room Group

Property Law Please Help

A buys a house, she pays £50,000 deposit and takes a mortgage of £350,000. Soon after, A's boyfriend moves in with her, each of them pay £100 towards household expenses and A's boyfriend pays alone the mortgage for 5 years. After 5 years, A's boyfriend leaves and claims he has rights for the house.

I am thinking that there is no resulting trust as resulting trust only arises at the time of the purchase of the house, what happens afterwards does not matter - is this how easy a question this is? or is there something I am missing?
Reply 1
You're right that there's not going to be a resulting trust but based on the fact the boyfriend has paid the mortage instalments for 5 years, a common intention constructive trust is likely to arise allowing him some % of interest in the property.

EDIT: You could also explore the household expenses issue and whether those indirect contributions COULD give rise to an interest in the propety, however, the mortgage instalments is the safe bet.
(edited 12 years ago)
Original post by vahik92
A buys a house, she pays £50,000 deposit and takes a mortgage of £350,000. Soon after, A's boyfriend moves in with her, each of them pay £100 towards household expenses and A's boyfriend pays alone the mortgage for 5 years. After 5 years, A's boyfriend leaves and claims he has rights for the house.

I am thinking that there is no resulting trust as resulting trust only arises at the time of the purchase of the house, what happens afterwards does not matter - is this how easy a question this is? or is there something I am missing?


You've only considered one issue. There's more to this question than resulting trusts. You need to think about constructive trusts - the recent decision of Jones v Kernott [2011] should help. If not, you may want to consider proprietary estoppel.
Mortgage payments can found a resulting trust - but only if made on the basis of the mortgage agreement entered into when the house was bought. If A and BF were jointly liable for the mortgage debt, then BF would have got an interest based on the mortgage repayments. As A is the only person who took out the mortgage, A does not get an interest. He can also get no interest under a RT from paying household expenses.

Therefore you need to think about how to apply a constructive trust analysis.

Quick Reply

Latest