Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Week 9 Equitable Property and Equitable Doctrines - Coggle Diagram

- - - - negates the presumption of a resulting trust where there is a close relationship between the tranferor and the transferee
        
        There is a debate about the current relevance and utility in Australia about the Doctrine of Advancement
      - Sometimes the relationship of the parties means that a presumption of advancement applies and the recipient is assumed to be the full legal owner rather than a trustee
        https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/SydLRev/2011/2.pdf
  - - - first is that…where a person pays the purchase price of property and causes it to be transferred to another or to another and himself jointly, the property is presumed to be held by the transferee or transferees upon trust for the person who provided the purchase money.
      - second can properly be seen as complementary of the first. It is: where two or more persons advance the purchase price of property in different shares, it is presumed that the person or persons to whom the legal title is transferred holds or hold the property upon resulting trust in favour of those who provided the purchase price in the shares in which they provided it.
      - third "presumption", usually called the "presumption of advancement", is not, if viewed in isolation, strictly a presumption at all. It is simply that there are certain relationships in which equity infers that any benefit which was provided for one party at the cost of the other has been so provided by way of "advancement" with the result that the prima facie position remains that the equitable interest is presumed to follow the legal estate and to be at home with the legal title or, in the words of Dixon C.J., McTiernan, Fullagar and Windeyer JJ. in Martin v. Martin [1959] HCA 62; (1959) 110 CLR 297, at p 303, that there is an "absence of any reason for assuming that a trust arose".
- - - - The HCA found a constructive trust in favour of female B as the 45% interest in the property with some adjustments for contributions made by male B. All the adjustments were in favour of male B.
        Male B was also ordered to pay female B’s costs of the HCA appeal, having been substantially unsuccessful in the appeal.
      - equity will not permit that other party to assert or retain the benefit of the relevant property to the extent that it would be unconscionable for him so to do…’
        
        the constructive trust serves as a remedy which equity imposes regardless of actual or presumed agreement or intention "to preclude the retention or assertion of beneficial ownership of property to the extent that such retention or assertion would be contrary to equitable principle".
      - In this situation the appellant's assertion, after the relationship had failed, that the Leumeah property, which was financed in part through the pooled funds, is his sole property, is his property beneficially to the exclusion of any interest at all on the part of the respondent, amounts to unconscionable conduct which attracts the intervention of equity and the imposition of a constructive trust at the suit of the respondent.
- - - - Commonwealth of Australia v Verwayen (1990) 170 CLR 394
      - Commonwealth v Clarke [1994] 2 VR 333
    - - Giumelli v Giumelli (1999) 196 CLR 101
      - Delaforce v Simpson-Cook (2010) 78 NSWLR 483
      - Sidhu v Van Dyke (2014) 308 ALR 232
    - - case involved an appeal concerning whether the appellant was estopped from denying the existence of a binding contract that it would take a lease of the respondent’s premises and if this is so are required to pay damages in lieu of specific performance of an agreement for lease
        
        In the end the joint judgment concluded that promissory estoppel had been established on the facts
        
        To express the point in the language of promissory estoppel the appellant is estopped in all the circumstances from retreating from its implied promise to complete the contract
        
        out 6 elements necessary in his view to establish equitable estoppel
        
        (2) the defendant has induced the plaintiff to adopt that assumption or expectation
        
        (3) the plaintiff acts or abstains from acting in reliance on the assumption or expectation
        
        (1) the plaintiff assumed that a particular legal relationship then existed between the plaintiff and the defendant or expected that a particular legal relationship would exist between them and, in the latter case, that the defendant would not be free to withdraw from the expected legal relationship
        
        (4) the defendant knew or intended him to do so;
        
        (5) the plaintiff's action or inaction will occasion detriment if the assumption or expectation is not fulfilled
        
        6) the defendant has failed to act to avoid that detriment whether by fulfilling the assumption or expectation or otherwise
        
        They describe the orthodox case of promissory estoppel as follows:
        ‘…where the promisor promises that he will not exercise or enforce an existing right, the elements of reliance and detriment attract equitable intervention on the basis that it is unconscionable for the promisor to depart from his promise, if to do so will result in detriment to the promisee.’
        
        referring to Taylor Fashions Ltd v Liverpool Victoria Trustees Ltd (1982) QB 133
        
        ‘…promissory estoppel and proprietary estoppel or estoppel by acquiescence as mere facets of the same general principle…what gave need for the court to intervene was the defendant’s unconscionable attempt to go back on the assumptions which were the foundations of their dealings.’
        
        Promissory estoppel
      - see page 301 of current text for basic assumption of estoppel