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.

Solution (iii) is not merely the most rational, it is the only one which is rational. The happenstance of price movements and the dates of hearing is removed from consideration. Of course its value at the date of the hearing is a factor which may be taken into account in the overall assessment of what is to be done (s.3(5)) but that is a quite different question from what property is to be treated as part of the net estate.

Even to hold that they have equitable interests in the land for a limited period, namely until the land is sold, would, we think, be inconsistent with the trust for sale being an "immediate" trust for sale working an immediate conversion, which is what the Law of Property Act envisages (see Section 205(1) (xxix)), though, of course, it is not in fact only such a limited interest that the Appellants are seeking to charge.

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

Periodic tenancies obviously pose something of a puzzle if the law insists that the maximum term of any leasehold estate be certain. 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. But that is not the practical reality, as the law assumes a re-letting (or the extension of the term) at the end of each period, unless one or other of the parties gives notice to quit.

If afreehold is conveyed to and upon trust for themselves as joint tenants, each has the same beneficial interest in that property as the. If there be two beneficial joint tenants, severance produces a beneficial tenancy in common in two equal shares. 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.

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.