Joint Tenancy in UK Law

At any given moment the extent of the interest to which the trust relates extends no further than the end of the period of the tenancy which will next expire on a date for which it is still possible to give notice to quit.

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.

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.

So that, in the absence of all evidence, if a husband puts property into his wife's name he intends it to be a gift to her but if he puts it into joint names then (in the absence of all other evidence) the presumption is the same as a joint beneficial tenancy.

The burden will therefore be on the person seeking to show that the parties did intend their beneficial interests to be different from their legal interests, and in what way. In family disputes, strong feelings are aroused when couples split up. These often lead the parties, honestly but mistakenly, to reinterpret the past in self-exculpatory or vengeful terms. They also lead people to spend far more on the legal battle than is warranted by the sums actually at stake.

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.

Some of them, or dicta in them, certainly lend support to the submissions on behalf of the landlord; but I find the most helpful guidance in Howson v. Buxton. It appears to me to decide that, where an Act of Parliament refers to "the tenant", and the letting is to two or more persons jointly, it is permissible for the court to hold, if so to do makes better sense of the relevant statutory provision in its particular context, that one of those persons, by himself, may for certain purposes be treated as being "the tenant".