Moore v Moore & Anor

When satisfying a proprietary estoppel, the court must exercise its broad discretion on a principled and proportionate basis. It must consider the claimant’s expectation and detriment, countervailing benefits, changed circumstances, competing claims, taxation and whether the parties need a clean break.

An accelerated transfer of promised property must preserve interests to which the claimant’s expectation was always subject. A remedy is defective if it creates prolonged financial dependence between estranged parties or is imposed without adequate valuations, tax evidence and information about their resources. Where the available evidence is insufficient, the court should adjourn or remit the remedial question for further determination.

A son worked throughout his adult life on his family’s farm after receiving repeated assurances that he would inherit his father’s interest following the deaths of both parents, subject to adequate provision for his mother. After family relations deteriorated, his father sought to dissolve their farming partnership. The son counterclaimed in proprietary estoppel.

The deputy High Court judge found assurance, reliance, detriment and unconscionability. He ordered the immediate transfer of the father’s farming interests to the son, subject to residential licences, weekly payments and responsibility for the parents’ care costs. A supplementary judgment, [2016] EWHC 2202 (Ch), determined that additional properties were partnership assets.

The father appealed against the establishment and scope of the equity, the partnership findings and the remedy. The central issue was whether the immediate-transfer regime satisfied the equity proportionately in the parties’ changed circumstances.

1. Appeal allowed in part. The findings that the son had established a proprietary estoppel, and that the equity extended to the father’s interest in the farming business and relevant partnership property, were upheld. The order specifying how the equity should be satisfied was set aside and that question was remitted for a further hearing.

2. The trial judge was entitled to find sufficiently clear assurances, reliance and substantial detriment. Appellate intervention in evaluative findings of fact requires the decision to be plainly wrong, meaning that it cannot reasonably be explained or justified. The wills and pre-action correspondence did not make the trial judge’s findings unreasonable. The son’s receipt of his uncle’s share did not satisfy an equity arising from promises concerning the father’s separate share.

3. The remedy was founded on the false premise that arrangements could be reconstructed as though the dispute had never occurred. The assurances contemplated inheritance only after the surviving parent’s death and were subject to proper provision for the mother. By trial, the partnership had ended, the father lacked capacity and family relations had irretrievably broken down. Those changes required a clean break rather than continuing residential and financial dependence on the estranged son.

4. Acceleration of the son’s entitlement was permissible in principle, but it could not prejudice either parent. The court had to give full weight to the mother’s reasonable expectations arising from a long marriage. The trial judge also lacked current valuations, tax evidence and adequate information about the parents’ resources and litigation liabilities. He should therefore have directed a further hearing before determining relief.

5. On remittal, the father’s farming interest should in principle be transferred to the son, subject to taxation and provision for the mother. She should receive a clean-break lump sum sufficient for suitable housing, reasonable income and contingencies. The likely range was £1 million to £2 million. Direct inheritance tax or capital gains tax liabilities arising from the transfer and fundraising should be borne by the son. Transitional occupation, care and payment provisions would continue, with weekly payments increased to £300 and no set-off.

6. The company owned its own assets, but the equity could operate through a transfer of the father’s shares. The trial judge could also include reinvested partnership profits represented by the father’s current account and the specified properties. He was entitled to infer an agreement displacing the statutory default of a partnership at will.

Leggatt and Floyd LJJ agreed with Henderson LJ.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): By [2018] EWCA Civ 2669, allowed the appeal concerning satisfaction of the proprietary-estoppel equity, dismissed all other grounds and remitted the remedial question for a further hearing.
2. Court of Appeal (permission): Permission to appeal on all grounds was granted at an oral hearing reported at [2017] EWCA Civ 2345, after refusals by the trial judge and on the papers.
3. High Court, Chancery Division: Following trial, the deputy judge found a proprietary estoppel and ordered the immediate transfer of the father’s farming interests subject to continuing provision for both parents. In the supplementary judgment, [2016] EWHC 2202 (Ch), he determined that the Little House, Ashburton and the Water Meadows were partnership assets.