Emily Bueno, Associate in Private Wealth Disputes team, contributed to STEP Journal (Vol29 Iss2) looking at how Courts in England and Wales balance legal certainty with fairness when determining cohabitees’ property rights.
"Marriage rates in the UK have fallen greatly in the past few decades. Concomitantly, the number of cohabiting couples has significantly increased, and such couples are the fastest-growing family type. In the absence of legislation protecting cohabitees’ property rights on the breakdown of their relationship (such as that for divorcing couples under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973), English and Welsh courts, to quote Lady Justice Arden (as she then was) in Pennington v Waine,1 ‘have tempered the wind … to the shorn lamb … by utilising the constructive trust’.2."
Click here to read the full article: Emily Bueno, ‘A constructive approach’, STEP Journal (Vol29 Iss2), p.71