ABSTRACT
Originally, the court did not allow a party to rebut the presumption of advancement by adducing evidence of his own attempted illegality or fraudulent purpose on public policy grounds (but see Tribe v Tribe [1995] 3 WLR 913, CA, p 199 below). If the transfer is made in order to avoid creditors and the transferor becomes insolvent then, by virtue of the Insolvency Act 1986, the conveyance may be set aside by the court. The situation that we are now considering is in respect of a transfer in an attempt to put the property out of reach of the creditors. The precaution taken by the transferor has become unnecessary because he (the transferor) does not become insolvent, but he wishes to put the clock back to what it was before the transfer. In short, the claim is made by the transferor to recover the property from the transferee. The court originally applied the following maxim indiscriminately, ‘He who comes to Equity, must come with clean hands’: see Gascoigne v Gascoigne.
