ABSTRACT
Co-ownership 3 INTRODUCTION The law relating to concurrent interests in property (co-ownership) has changed considerably in recent years. This is a result both of changes in the legislative framework surrounding co-ownership (that is, the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act (TOLATA) 1996) and because the increased incidence of co-ownership has revealed many practical problems for which the 1925 legislation did not clearly provide. Many difficulties have been caused by social and economic changes in the pattern of property ownership, particularly of residential or domestic houses. The emergence of the Pettitt v Pettitt (1970), Lloyds Bank v Rosset (1989) and Stack v Dowden (2007) line of authority, whereby a partner or spouse can acquire an interest in a house that formally belongs to someone else, has done much to channel the law of co-ownership in new directions. Co-ownership is no longer confined to commercial or business situations but is virtually an expected attribute of domestic life. The Law of Property Act (LPA) 1925, which established the original scheme of co-ownership, was ill-equipped to deal with this shift of emphasis and the changes made by the TOLATA (which came into force on 1 January 1997) have done much to remedy deficiencies in the law, although many would argue that much remedial work had been done already by sensible judicial application of existing statute. As we shall see, where land (for example, a house) is deliberately co-owned, in the sense of having been conveyed originally to two or more people (for example, husband and wife, or an unmarried couple), few serious problems exist about who owns it, although there may be issues about the size of each owner’s share. However, where co-ownership arises informally – usually in respect of land that was conveyed originally to only one person (for example, the man alone) – considerable practical problems can arise, and not even the new legislation has dealt with all of these. Importantly, the issues remain the same even if the co-owners are not in an intimate relationship. Thus, a number of recent cases concern parents and children and some arise in non-family relationships, such as the infirm and their live-in carers.
