Lansforsakringar Bank AB v Wood & Others
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | MR JUSTICE PATTEN |
| Judgment Date | 17 July 2007 |
| Neutral Citation | [2007] EWHC 2419 (QB) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: QB/2007/APP/0099 |
| Date | 17 July 2007 |
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2A 2LL
MR JUSTICE PATTEN
Case No: QB/2007/APP/0099
Mr James Leadbeater (instructed by Messrs Watson Farley & Williams) appeared on behalf of the APPELLANT
Mr Adrian Pay (instructed b y Messrs Row & Scott) appeared on behalf of the RESPONDENT
This is an appeal by the claimant in these proceedings, Lansforsakringar Bank, in relation to a judgment of Master Leslie given on 29 January 2007 on an application by the bank for an interim third party debt order pursuant to CPR part 72.2. The application related to the payment of the sum of £300,000, which I directed should be paid to the defendant, Dr Malcolm Wood, under the provisions of the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 from the estate of his late mother, following a trial which took place before me in Newcastle in April 2006.
The background to that claim and the reasons for my decision are contained in my written reserved judgment, which is to be found under neutral citation number [2006] EWHC 929. The outcome of those proceedings was that I directed that Dr Wood should receive as a lump sum from the residuary estate the figure of £300,000 and that that sum should be paid in the usual way out of the net estate in the due course of administration. The reason for making an order in that form is of course that under the provisions of section 2 of the 1975 Act the court's power to grant relief, including by way of making an order for a lump sum under section 2(1)(b) of the Act, exists only in relation to the net estate of the deceased and therefore any provision which the court directs should be made cannot interfere with the due administration of the estate, including in particular the payment of the debts and liabilities of the deceased.
Section 19 of the Act further makes it clear that an order made under section 2 is to be treated “for all purposes” (those are the words of the subsection) and shall for all purposes take effect and be deemed to have had effect from the deceased's death subject to the provisions of the order. Therefore the order which I made, like any similar order for financial provision, operates in effect as if it were a provision under the will for payment out of a proportion of the residuary estate.
Before I come to the jurisdictional issue which this appeal is concerned with, it is necessary for me very briefly to set out the immediate background to this particular claim. Some of the facts are referred to and formed part of the evidence before me in Newcastle but it is, I think, common ground that in December 1990 the defendant, Dr Wood, borrowed 300,000 Swedish krona from the claimant's predecessor in title in order to buy into a partnership in a Swedish law firm. That debt was on the evidence before me guaranteed by his parents, and Barclays Bank, as the correspondent bank for the Swedish bank which granted the loan, took (and I believe continues to hold, or at least did until recently when the property was sold) the title deeds to Dr Wood's parents' home in Gosforth in Newcastle as security.
On 27 January 1995 the bank obtained judgment in Sweden against the defendant arising out of the nonpayment of the loan in the sum of 300,000 krona plus interest at what I am told was a contractual rate of 18 per cent per annum, making a total of some 427,840 krona plus an additional 35 krona in costs. That judgment was registered in the Queen's Bench Division on 19 October 1995 and Dr Wood's appeal against that registration was dismissed by Butterfield J on 16 February 1996. To date nothing has been paid in relation to the judgment.
The present position is that the claimant is attempting to recover what it says is due to it under the judgment on two fronts. Firstly, from the executors of Mrs Wood's estate and, secondly, by way of these proceedings directly against Dr Wood himself. As things stand today the total sum due is something over 1.25 million krona, which amounts in sterling to about £97,000.
On 28 September 2006 an interim third party debt order was made but when the matter came back before Master Leslie on 29 January 2007...
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Randall v Randall
...If a person makes a successful claim under the 1975 Act, he or she becomes a beneficiary of the estate, not a creditor: see Lansforsakringar Bank AB v Wood & others [2007] EWHC 2419 (QB). Mr Baxter contends that a claim to be a beneficiary of the estate under statute is much closer to a cla......