Property Rights of Unmarried Cohabitees

Although disputes upon the termination of a marriage are usually resolved in accordance with a legislatively determined scheme, similar disputes between unmarried cohabitees generally fall to be determined on the basis of rules developed by the courts. Much of the difficulty surrounding the area is attributable to the fact that it straddles a number of the traditional legal compartments, falling somewhere between equity, property, family, contract and restitution. The present book makes a determined effort to isolate each strand of the doctrinal tangle and to trace it back to its source. To this end, it considers developments in the established doctrines of resulting trust and estoppel before moving on to consider, in turn, the English 'common intention' trust; the modified resulting trust analysis favoured in Ireland; Lord Denning's abortive 'constructive trust of a new model'; the Canadian unjust enrichment approach; the Australian 'unconscionability' doctrine; and, finally, New Zealand's 'reasonable expectations' model. A comparative approach is taken throughout the book, culminating in a concluding chapter which draws together a number of themes that recur across the various doctrinal approaches

Author: John Mee

Publisher: Hart Publishing

Publication Date: Apr 19, 1999

Number of Pages: 384 pages

Binding: Hardback or Cased Book

ISBN-10: 1901362760

ISBN-13: 9781901362763