Steadman v Steadman
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | Lord Reid,Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest,Viscount Dilhorne,Lord Simon of Glaisdale,Lord Salmon |
| Judgment Date | 19 June 1974 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1974] UKHL J0619-2 |
| Date | 19 June 1974 |
| Court | House of Lords |
[1974] UKHL J0619-2
Lord Reid
Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest
Viscount Dilhorne
Lord Simon of Glaisdale
Lord Salmon
House of Lords
Upon Report from the Appellate Committee, to whom was referred the Cause Steadman (A. P.) against Steadman (A. P.), That the Committee had heard Counsel, as well on Monday the 1st, as on Tuesday the 2nd, Wednesday the 3rd, and Thursday the 4th, days of April last, upon the Petition and Appeal of Sylvia Emily Lila Steadman (Assisted Person) of 76A Tuam Road, Plumstead in the London Borough of Greenwich, praying, That the matter of the Order set forth in the Schedule thereto, namely, an Order of Her Majesty's Court of Appeal of the 30th of July 1973, might be reviewed before Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament, and that the said Order might be reversed, varied or altered, or that the Petitioner might have such other relief in the premises as to Her Majesty the Queen in Her Court of Parliament, might seem meet; as also upon the Case of Norman Leslie Steadman (Assisted Person), lodged in answer to the said Appeal; and due consideration had this day of what was offered on either side in this Cause:
It is Ordered and Adjudged, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Court of Parliament of Her Majesty the Queen assembled, That the said Order of Her Majesty's Court of Appeal of the 30th day of July 1973, complained of in the said Appeal, be, and the same is hereby, Affirmed, and that the said Petition and Appeal be, and the same is hereby, dismissed this House: And it is further Ordered, That the Costs of the Appellant and of the Respondent in this House be taxed in accordance with the provisions of the Third Schedule to the Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949, as amended by the Legal Aid Act 1960, the amount thereof to be certified by the Clerk of the Parliaments.
My Lords,
The marriage of the Appellant, the wife, and the Respondent, the husband, was dissolved in 1970. They were then joint owners of a house which had been bought in 1963 for £3,600. Prior to the divorce the husband had been ordered to pay maintenance of £2 per week to the wife and £2.10.0. per week for their child. The husband remained in occupation of the house.
In 1970 the wife applied under section 17 of the Married Woman's Property Act, 1882, for inter alia an order for the sale of the house and division of the proceeds but no further steps were taken until 1972. At that time the husband was in arrears in paying the wife's maintenance in a sum of £194. There were long negotiations between the parties' solicitors, and ultimately on 2nd March, 1972, the matter came before the Magistrates Court. The husband's solicitor met the wife before the hearing. Unfortunately her solicitor was not present but there is no suggestion that the husband's solicitor took advantage of his absence.
The parties then reached an oral agreement with regard to both the maintenance and the house. The Court were to be asked to authorise discharge of the maintenance order against the husband and continuation of the order with regard to the child, to order the husband to pay £100 of the arrears of her maintenance and to order remission of the balance. In addition the Court were to be informed of the agreement with regard to the house that the husband should pay £1,500 to the wife and the wife would transfer to the husband her interest in the house. The Magistrate made orders in accordance with the agreement and the husband paid £100 to the wife.
The husband then borrowed £1,500 from a building society and paid that sum to his solicitor and the solicitor prepared a deed of transfer of the wife's interest in the house and sent it for her signature. But the wife refused to sign thinking that £1,500 was less than she ought to have. She renewed her application under section 17 to have the house sold. The husband pleaded the parties' agreement as a binding compromise but the wife pleaded that the agreement was unenforceable.
She relied on section 40 of the Law of Property Act, 1925, which provides:
"(1) No action may be brought upon any contract for the sale or other disposition of land or any interest in land, unless the agreement upon which such action is brought, or some memorandum or note thereof, is in writing, and signed by the party to be charged or by some other person thereunto by him lawfully authorised.
(2) This section … does not affect the law relating to part performance …"
The husband relied on subsection (2) and the Registrar held that there had been part performance so that subsection (1) did not apply. His decision was reversed by the County Court Judge but an appeal to the Court of Appeal was allowed by a majority (Roskill and Scarman L.JJ., Edmund Davies L.J. dissenting).
The first point taken by the husband was that section 40 does not apply to an agreement compromising a litigation or to an agreement dealing with other matters besides the transfer of land. We did not find it necessary to hear argument on this matter and I therefore express no opinion about it.
The sole question for your Lordships' decision is whether the admitted facts amount to part performance within the meaning of section 40(2). In my view it is clear that the oral agreement of 2nd March, 1972, is indivisible and not severable. The whole must stand or fall. Indeed the contrary was not seriously argued. And it is clear that the payment of £100 to the wife as ordered by the Magistrates' Court was, taking the words in their ordinary sense, in part performance of the agreement. The husband also relies on the following other acts by him or his solicitor as being further part performance; (1) the intimation of the agreement to the Magistrates and his abandonment of his attempts to have all arrears of maintenance remitted, and (2) sending to the wife the transfer which she refused to sign and incurring the cost of its preparation. I am very doubtful about the first of these but I am inclined to think that the second could be regarded as part performance. It is the universal custom that a deed of transfer of an interest in land is prepared by the solicitor of the transferee so the wife or her solicitor as her agent must have known that the husband would incur the cost of preparation of the deed in carrying out the agreement.
But the wife's case is that we must not take "part performance" in its ordinary meaning because the phrase has acquired a highly technical meaning over the centuries.
This matter has a very long history. Section 40 replaced a part of section 4 of the Statute of Frauds 29 Car. II, Cap. 3, and very soon after the passing of that Act authorities on this matter began to accumulate. It is now very difficult to find from them any clear guidance of general application. But it is not difficult to see at least one principle behind them. If one party to an agreement stands by and lets the other party incur expense or prejudice his position on the faith of the agreement being valid he will not then be allowed to turn round and assert that the agreement is unenforceable. Using fraud in its older and less precise sense, that would be fraudulent on his part and it has become proverbial that Courts of Equity will not permit the Statute to be made an instrument of fraud.
It must be remembered that this legislation did not and does not make oral contracts relating to land void: it only makes them unenforceable. And the statutory provision must be pleaded; otherwise the Court does not apply it. So it is in keeping with equitable principles that in proper circumstances a person will not be allowed "fraudulently" to take advantage of a defence of this kind. There is nothing about part performance in the Statute of Frauds. It is an invention of the Court of Chancery and in deciding any case not clearly covered by authority I think that the equitable nature of the remedy must be kept in mind.
A large number of the authorities are cases where a purchaser under an oral agreement has been permitted to take possession of or to do things on the land which he has agreed to buy. But sometimes rules appropriate to that situation have been sought to be applied to other cases of part performance where they are not appropriate. Indeed the Courts have sometimes seemed disinclined to apply the principle at all to such other cases.
Normally the consideration for the purchase of land is a sum of money and there are statements that a sum of money can never be treated as part performance. Such statements would be reasonable if the person pleading the Statute tendered repayment of any part of the price which he had received and was able thus to make restitutio in integrum. That would remove any "fraud" or any equity on which the purchaser could properly rely. But to make a general rule that payment of money can never be part performance would seem to me to defeat the whole purpose of the doctrine and I do not think that we are compelled by authority to do that.
The argument for the wife, for which there is a good deal of authority, is that no act can be relied on as an act of part performance unless it relates to the land to be acquired and can only be explained by the existence of a contract relating to the land. But let me suppose a case of an oral contract where the consideration for the transfer of the land was not money but the transfer of some personal property or the performance of some obligation. The personal property is then transferred or the obligation is performed to the knowledge of the owner of the land in circumstances where there can be no restitutio in integrum. On what rational principle could it be said that the doctrine of part performance is not to apply? And we were not referred to any case of that kind where the Court had refused to apply it. The transfer of the personal property or the...
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