Ocorian Private Trustees (Jersey) Ltd v Julia McGeoch

Hearing dates: 11 May 2026

This judgment was handed down remotely at 2 pm on 26 June 2025 by circulation to the parties or their representatives by e-mail and by release to the National Archive.

Introduction

This is my judgment on an appeal from the order of HHJ Glen dated 23 February 2026 in the County Court at Southampton. Permission to appeal was given by Michael Green J on 23 March 2026, who also directed that the appeal was fit to be heard by a deputy High Court judge. The litigation concerns possession of a rural property known as Stapleford Farm, Durley, in Hampshire. This is owned by the appellant (which is a company incorporated in Jersey) as trustee of a Jersey law trust. The respondent is a beneficiary of the trust, who has been permitted to occupy it.

By his order, Judge Glen dismissed the applications of the appellant (i) to strike out the defence to its possession claim against the defendant (the respondent on this appeal) on the basis that it gave rise to an abuse of process, and (ii), if that application failed, for summary judgment on a discrete aspect of the defence. Judge Glen also allowed, in part, an application by the defendant to amend the defence and to introduce a counterclaim. The appellant seeks to appeal against this decision also. On 7 April 2026, the respondent filed a notice seeking to uphold the order of Judge Glen on additional grounds, but she does not herself seek to appeal against any part of the order.

Background

The late Mr Lennie Clark McGeoch was a wealthy Scottish businessman. During his life, he established a number of trusts governed (or now governed) by Jersey law for the benefit of his family and employees of the family business. Four of these trusts are known collectively as the “Family Trusts”. Individually, they are known as the McGeoch Discretionary Trust, the No 3 Trust, the No 4 Trust and the No 5 Trust. The appellant is the current trustee of the No 3 Trust. A related Jersey company, Ocorian Ltd, is the trustee of the others.

Mr McGeoch had four children. He died in December 2020. The respondent is one of the four children. She has two sisters of the whole blood, Pamela and Laura, and a brother of the half blood, Angus. During his life, Mr McGeoch expressed the wish that his four children should benefit equally from the trusts and other gifts which he made to them. However, it appears that, over the years, the four children have not benefited equally in the way that their father wished.

Three of the family trusts were due to vest on 31 December 2022. The trustees of the Family Trusts decided that they would equalise the benefits between the four children, by distributing trust assets between them so as to achieve such equalisation. The process was complex. The trustees produced a “Distribution Plan”, showing (i) what each child had received and (ii) what each should receive in future to achieve equalisation. They also produced a “Steps Plan”, showing what needed to be done to distribute the assets and wind up the trusts. These plans involved the sale by the trustee of the No 3 Trust of Stapleford Farm, so that liquid funds would be brought into that trust and equalisation payments could be made in accordance with those plans.

Stapleford Farm had been acquired in 2008 with the aid of a loan from a company owned by the family trusts (“WTDL”). The then trustee of the No 3 Trust granted the respondent a licence, made by deed dated 24 December 2009, to occupy Stapleford Farm rent-free. Clause 7 of that licence provides:

“This Licence may be ended by the Licensor or the Licensee giving six month's [sic] notice in writing to the other to expire at any time.”

The deed was executed both by the then trustee of the trust, as licensor, but also by the respondent, as licensee. Further monies were lent by WTDL in relation to the acquisition. As at March 2025, some £5.7 million was owed to WTDL by the appellant as trustee of the No 3 Trust.

In 2017, Mr McGeoch gave the respondent some £2.4 million for the purpose of enabling her to purchase the Farm from the trustee (and to pay the stamp duty land tax arising on the purchase). However, instead of buying the Farm, the respondent spent the money on acquiring the Landscape Stud, an equestrian property near Clonmel in Co Tipperary, Ireland. The respondent later sold the Landscape Stud. She lives at Stapleford Farm, with her mother.

Jersey law and practice

Because of the connection that these proceedings have with Jersey law and the Jersey legal system, I record here a number of pertinent matters. The first is that as a practising solicitor over about 30 years I did a lot of work with Jersey clients and Jersey law, along the way co-writing two books with Jersey advocates, one on Jersey trust law and one on Jersey property law. For several years I was a visiting professor of trust law at the Institute of Law in Jersey (which teaches the professional advocates' course). I have been a member of the editorial board of the Jersey Law Review (now the Jersey and Guernsey Law Review) since its foundation in 1997. Since 2023 I have been an ordinary (part-time) judge of the Jersey Court of Appeal. I therefore have considerable experience of the law and legal system of Jersey. This will be apparent in what follows. But I record that I have been careful not to give expert evidence to myself on contentious matters.

The Jersey litigation

The trustees of the Family Trusts were conscious of the impending vesting dates for three of the Trusts. On 11 October 2022, therefore, the trustees of all those trusts applied to the Royal Court of Jersey by way of representation (similar to our old originating summons procedure, and functionally, at least, something like a modern Part 8 claim) under article 51 of the Trusts (Jersey) Law 1984. They sought the court's approval (or “blessing”) of the proposed equalisation plans. This is a similar jurisdiction to that known in England as category (2) of the Public Trustee v Cooper jurisdiction. Indeed, the Jersey courts appear to have borrowed that idea directly from English law: see Re S Settlement 2001 JLR N-37, [2001] JRC 154. Given the importance of trusts to the financial services sector of the Jersey economy, it is a jurisdiction that is frequently engaged. In accordance with the usual Jersey practice in the exercise of this jurisdiction, these proceedings were not heard in public, but in private.

There was a hearing of the representation in May 2023, at which the trustees of the Family Trusts and the four children were all represented by advocates. At that stage the Royal Court declined to approve the Distribution Plan, but gave directions for the preparation of a further plan by July 2023, with a hearing in September 2023. The new Distribution Plan was prepared, and dated 14 July 2023. At the September hearing, the Court extended the vesting dates for the No 3 Trust, the No 4 Trust and the No 5 Trust to December 2023, and gave liberty to apply. In October 2023 an Amended Representation was filed with the Court, together with the new Distribution Plan.

There was a further hearing before the Royal Court (Commissioner William Bailhache, sitting with Jurats Yonge and Austin-Vautier) in November 2023, at which the trustees sought the approval of the Court to the new Distribution Plan, and various ancillary directions, including one that the respondent

“provide the Representors with proof of funds evidencing her ability to purchase Stapleford Farm by 30 November 2023, failing which eviction proceedings will commence in England”.

It appears that there were two main contentious issues. These were (i) the possible write-off (and its allocation among beneficiaries) of loans made by WTDL for the purposes of acquiring a French property, and (ii) the realisation of Stapleford Farm to release funds for the equalisation plan.

The trustees and each of the four children were again separately represented by Jersey advocates at the hearing in November 2023, except Laura, who appeared in person. So, the respondent had the opportunity, through her advocate, to put her case on the “blessing” application (including the direction about possible eviction proceedings) to the court. At the conclusion of the hearing, the Royal Court made an order that the vesting date for the trusts be extended to 30 September 2024, and reserved its judgment on the “blessing” application. That reserved (written) judgment was delivered on 18 January 2024.

In its January 2024 judgment, the Royal Court stated its conclusions relating to Stapleford Farm as follows:

“40. The Number 3 Trust needs to sell Stapleford Farm even to contain the WTDL loss at that level. Accordingly, if Julia does not proceed to buy it, the Trustees will need to evict her (and her mother) and sell the property on the open market to a third party. The Trustees have been requesting Julia since February 2022 to provide proof of funds, and they now take the view that an urgent decision is needed. As a result of the delay, Julia was served with a notice to quit on 1 February 2022 and a second notice was served on 16 January 2023, without prejudice to the first, but no eviction proceedings have yet been taken. Julia has claimed that the sale of Stapleford Farm will leave her homeless; although it is hard to see how that could possibly be, given that she owns a property in Ireland...