''Pettitt v Pettitt''

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AC 777 is a leading

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case, concerning the

presumption of advancement The presumption of advancement is a legal presumption which arises in various common law jurisdictions in relation to the transfers of money or other property. Broadly, the presumption states that where a husband transfers property to his wife, o ...

and a spouse's equitable interest in the matrimonial home.

Facts

In Pettitt, the wife had used her own money to buy a house during the marriage, meaning the title to the house had been in the wife's name, and both she and her husband resided therein until the wife left the husband. The husband claimed that he had carried out a considerable number of improvements to the house and garden. These improvements consisted of internal decoration work, building a wardrobe, laying a lawn and constructing an ornamental wall and a side wall in the garden. By virtue of these efforts the husband sought a beneficial interest in the proceeds of sale of the property.

Judgment

In the course of his judgment,

Lord Diplock William John Kenneth Diplock, Baron Diplock, (8 December 1907 – 14 October 1985) was a British barrister and judge who served as a lord of appeal in ordinary between 1968 and until his death in 1985. Appointed to the English High Court in ...

said,

"It would, in my view, be an abuse of the legal technique for ascertaining or imputing intention to apply to transactions between the post-war generation of married couples "presumptions which are based upon inferences of fact which an earlier generation of judges drew as to the most likely intentions of earlier generations of spouses belonging to the propertied classes of a different social era."

Facts

Judgment

References

See also