Property Law: Principles of Resulting Trusts

LAWS 111010 & 20110 Property Law 1
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LAWS 111010 & 20110 Property Law 1
Part A: Chosen Question 2
Word Count:1507
'It is very unfortunate that resulting trust principles are no longer applied to determine interests in the family home. They had the great advantage of being certain. In contrast, the common intention constructive trust makes the determination of interests in the family home entirely dependent on the court's view of fair distribution.'
The doctrine of resulting trust acts as one of the legal precursors essential in shaping trust relationships concerning the individual property and the transfer of the same to persons who hold it for a beneficiary's interests (Hudson, 2016). Notably, the doctrine is an equitable reversion that, by operation of law, automatically revert to the transferor in situations where the relationship was expressly conditioned on an intentional trust and the same has not attached to the transfer or later management of the property. Where the express trust fails, thus making it legally difficult to dispose of the property completely, a resulting trust arises to cover the gap in the property's title. Through practice and framing up of advanced laws that are at par with the economic and social trends, the courts have established that the trust could be one that in its implicit nature, automatically arises from the conditioning in the relationship or the courts presume their existence, as was held in Re Vandervell Trustees Ltd [1974]. The underlying requirement is that both categories should be by operation of law. The person to whom the trust favors must have provided the property, which is the subject or holds an equitable interest that binds on them by the trust's existence.
Megarry VC in Re Sick and Funeral Society of St John's Sunday School, Golcar stated that resulting trust with their basic characteristic of springing back should follow the ideology that any property that a man cannot or fails to dispose of remains as his own. Following the origin of trusts as a mitigating factor that arose to enhance property management against the rigid and unfair common law rules, the subject has continued advancing to accommodate emerging societal issues. One of the advancements s the requirement that resulting trust principles cease to apply determining interests associated with the family home, a residential location for either the property owner or the beneficiary with equitable interests in its portion. Just like in Marshall V Cruttwell, where the court found that upon a person's death, the ownership of their property must pass to another person unless it was owned in a joint account for matrimonial properties, as was the case in Young v Sealey, the same rule applies for family homes. Resulting trust often arises in a family home context when the relationship was made without express declarations. The primary declaration in this context is the situation where one holds legal title without the equitable ownership of the family home.
Principles of Resulting Trusts
It is helpful to understand the presuppositions associated with the principles of resulting trusts to understand the disconnection wit...