Concurrent Interest in UK Law

Joint tenancy is a form of co-ownership, or concurrent ownership, of property. Its special feature is the right of survivorship, whereby the right to the whole of the property accrues automatically to the surviving joint tenants or joint tenant on the death of any one joint tenant. Severance is, as I understand it, the process of separating off the share of a joint tenant, so that the concurrent ownership will continue but the right of survivorship will no longer apply.

The second is that I know of no power that the Court has under section 17 to vary agreed or established titles to property.

No doubt such tenants in common are interested in the land in the general sense, as was remarked by Lord Justice Russell in re Kempthorne, 1930 (1) Ch. at p. 292 But that is not the same thing as their being owners of equitable interests in the realty. The whole purpose of the trust for sale is to make sure, by shifting theequitable interests away from the land and into the proceeds of sale, that a purchaser of the land takes froe from the equitable interests.

If afreehold is conveyed to and upon trust for themselves as joint tenants, each has the same beneficial interest in that property as the. and by declaration of the beneficial joint tenancy between and B, their respective rights and titles are no less clearly laid down and established than if there had been a declaration of a beneficial tenancy in common in equal undivided shares.

Periodic tenancies obviously pose something of a puzzle if the law insists that the maximum term of any leasehold estate be certain. The rule was invented long before periodic tenancies were invented and it has always been a problem how the rule is to apply to them. In one sense the term is certain, as it comes to an end when the week, the month, the quarter or the year for which it has been granted comes to an end.

The action of giving notice to determine a periodic tenancy is in form positive; but both on authority and on the principle so aptly summed up in the pithy Scottish phrase "tacit relocation" the substance of the matter is that it is by his omission to give notice of termination that each party signifies the necessary positive assent to the extension of the term for a further period.

By the conveyance the husband and wife, who were the purchasers thereunder, were to hold the property upon trust to sell the same with power to postpone the sale thereof and to hold the net proceeds of sale and other money applicable as capital and the net rents and profits thereof until sale upon trustfor themselves as joint tenants, Thus the entire beneficial interest in the property was declared at the outset. While it was the matrimonial home the spouses owned it as joint tenants.