Bennett Griffin Blog

Cohabitation

Q: When is Joint Ownership not equal entitlement?

A: When the Courts say it is not.

The recent Supreme Court ruling in the case of Jones v. Kernott shows that fairness and common sense can be upheld in co-habitation cases, regardless of the archaic law governing this area. From my experience, this has always been possible, but never so clearly upheld by the Courts as in this case.

Ms Jones and Mr Kernott were not married and bought a house together, each contributing equally financially to the purchase price. No agreements or declarations specifying as to how the capital in the home might be divided were entered into. Therefore, in the absence of such documents, Mr Kernott was entitled to claim an equal share of the capital even though he moved out of the home several years before the matter came to Court, and he had stopped paying anything towards the mortgage for years. He had supported their two children only on a minimal basis, leaving the bulk of responsibility to Ms Jones.

The final ruling took into account the actual circumstances of the case and found that it would be unfair for Mr Kernott to retain an equal interest in the capital, and he was awarded only 10% of the capital in the home.

In the Supreme Court, both Lords Wilson and Collins criticised Parliament for failing to legislate on cohabitation. Delivering judgment, Lord Wilson said: “In the light of the continued failure of Parliament to confer upon the courts limited redistributive powers in relation to the property of each party upon the breakdown of a non-marital relationship, I warmly applaud [this] development of the law of equity.”

I think the further point to note is that all unmarried couples should take advice as to agreements and declarations which might assist in clarifying who gets what in the event of a break up.

The debate continues…

JACQUELINE MENSAH

LAWYER, FAMILY TEAM, WARWICK STREET, DD WORTHING 01903 229938

The Bennett Griffin Bowling Bonanza 2011 was a huge success, for a second year running

There were strikes a go go, a variety of weird and wonderful bowling techniques and styles, a European champion bowler (thank you Lisa John!), and a wealth of raffle prizes, kindly donated by the teams that entered and local businesses. 

22 lanes were taken up by local businesses from Worthing and the surrounding area. It was a great networking event but more importantly an amazing fundraising event! The alley was filled with laughter, faces of sorrow (for the gutter bowlers) and lots of spots!

Congratulations to Matt Sutton (Best of BNI Worthing) and Geoff Raynsford (5 Rings) for the highest individual scores and congratulations also to Livin’ on a Spare (Spofforths Team 1) and H D Tribe Team 1, for the highest team scores.
Most importantly, congratulations and a huge thank you to Steve Murphy (Spofforths) and Samantha Lisher (Bennett Griffin), for the highest individual sponsorship raised.

All together, we managed to raise over £2,600! This was from online donations, raffle tickets, pledges and sponsorship raised on the night.

Thank you to all the businesses for their support from the Bennett Griffin crew and of course Pudsey himself on behalf of all the children in need.

Click here to donate via our Just Giving page

The Freedom to Choose

Nick Hind, associate solicitor in the personal injury department of Bennett Griffin LLP, Worthing comments:-

“One of the most infuriating aspects of pursuing a claim for both solicitor and client is, having identified for the client that they have legal expenses insurance that could be used to indemnify the costs of a claim, being told by the insurer that the client must instruct one of their panel solicitors to be able to use the insurance that the client has paid for.

We all know why the insurers adopt this position.  If they can direct the client to one of their panel solicitors they receive a nice fat referral fee and can also dictate terms in return.

The High Court has just landed another blow against this rather blatant restrictive practice by ruling that an insurer cannot restrict a client’s freedom to choose their own solicitor on the grounds of cost to the insurer.

The Courts are gradually chipping away the anti-competitive practices of legal expenses insurers, but the big one remains – that of the definition of proceedings and insurers insisting on restricting freedom of choice pre-issue of proceedings. 

It all comes down to insurers wanting to protect the referral fee revenue rather than their own customer’s legal interests.

But watch this space”