Presumption of Advancement in UK Law

Payment of the money having been admitted, prima facts that payment imported an obligation to repay in the absence of any circumstances tending to show anything in the nature of a presumption of advancement. This is not a case of fat bar and child, or husband and wife, or any other such bleed relationship which could have given rise to a presumption of advancement.

Accordingly, one is really driven back to consider this matter without the assistance of authority; and, being so unassisted, I ask myself what is to be inferred as to the nature of the transaction when the simple payment of money is proved or admitted between strangers.

It seems to me that it is not satisfactory to apply rigid rules of law to the evidence that is admissible to rebut the presumption of advancement. Plainly, self-serving statements or conduct of a transferor, who may long after the transaction be regretting earlier generosity, carry little or no weight. But words or conduct more proximate to the transaction itself should be given the significance that they naturally bear as part of the overall picture.

My Lords, I do not distinguish between the purchase of shares and the acquisition of shares upon allotment, and I think that the law is clear that on the one hand where a man purchases shares and they are registered in the name of a stranger there is a resulting trust in favour of the purchaser; on the other hand, if they are registered in the name of a child or one to whom the purchaser then stood in loco parentis, there is no such resulting trust but a presumption of advancement.

In the context of the acquisition of a family home, the presumption of a resulting trust made a great deal more sense when social and economic conditions were different and when it was tempered by the presumption of advancement. The breadwinner husband who provided the money to buy a house in his wife's name, or in their joint names, was presumed to be making her a gift of it, or of a joint interest in it.

That is why I say that his evidence strengthens the presumption of advancement, As far as I can see, the only possible alternative to what I have Just described would be the husband dishonestly putting the house in his wife's name wish the intention of himself having the beneficial interest in it, and also with the intention, when hefailed in business, to go to his creditors and say quite untruthfully and dishonestly;

The financial contribution may be direct, or where it is actually stated to be a contribution towards the price of the instalments. It may be indirect, as where both go out to work, and one pays the housekeeping and the other the mortgage instalments. The House did, however, sound a note of warning about proportions. It is not in every case that the parties hold in equal shares. In quite a few cases we have not given half and half but something different.