Property Rights in UK Law

It is now held that, whenever two parties by their joint efforts acquire property to be used for their joint benefit, the Courts may impose or impute a constructive or resulting trust. The legal owner is bound to hold the property on trust for them both. It can be enforced by an order for sale, but in a proper case the sale can be postponed indefinitely. It applies to husband and wife, to engaged couples, and to man and mistress, and may be toother relationships too.

But what we are concerned with here is legislation which takes away without compensation from a section of the citizen body singled out on racial grounds all their property on which the State passing the legislation can lay its hands and, in addition, deprive them of their citizenship. To my mind a law of this sort constitutes so grave an infringement of human rights that the Courts of this country ought to refuse to recognise it as a law at all.

If, as a result of tracing, it can be said that certain of the policy moneys are what now represent part of the assets subject to the trusts of the purchasers trust deed, then as a matter of English property law the purchasers have an absolute interest in such moneys. This case does not depend on whether it is fair, just and reasonable to give the purchasers an interest as a result of which the court in its discretion provides a remedy.

It is merely the process by which a claimant demonstrates what has happened to his property, identifies its proceeds and the persons who have handled or received them, and justifies his claim that the proceeds can properly be regarded as representing his property. It identifies the traceable proceeds of the claimant's property. It enables the claimant to substitute the traceable proceeds for the original asset as the subject matter of his claim.

In reaching his conclusion the judge applied by analogy the cases mentioned above concerning the assessment of damages when a defendant has invaded another's property rights but without diminishing the value of the property. However, it is not easy to see why, as between the parties to a contract, a violation of a party's contractual rights should attract a lesser degree of remedy than a violation of his property rights.

A resulting, implied or constructive trust—and it is unnecessary for present purposes to distinguish between these three classes of trust—is created by a transaction between the trustee and the cestui qui trust in connection with the acquisition by the trustee of a legal estate in land, whenever the trustee has so conducted himself that it would be inequitable to allow him to deny to the cestui qui trust a beneficial interest in the land acquired.

The purpose of bankruptcy proceedings, on the other hand, is not to determine or establish the existence of rights, but to provide a mechanism of collective execution against the property of the debtor by creditors whose rights are admitted or established.