Case Law Details
Guest and another Vs Guest (United Kingdom Supreme Court)
1. “One day my son, all this will be yours”. Spoken by a farmer to his son when in his teens, and repeated for many years thereafter. Relying on that promise of inheritance from his father, the son spends the best part of his working life on the farm, working at very low wages, accommodated in a farm cottage, in the expectation that he will succeed his father as owner of the farm, to be able to continue farming there, and in due course to pass on the farm to his own children.
2. Many years later, father and son fall out. It does not matter who is to blame for the falling out, but they can no longer work together or even live in close proximity. The son has no alternative but to leave, to find alternative work and rented accommodation for himself and his family elsewhere. Meanwhile the father cuts him out of his will. The facts of this case differ from the above common example only because the father David Guest has two sons, Andrew and Ross as well as a daughter Jan. Andrew was not promised the whole of the farm (“Tump Farm”) as an inheritance, but only a sufficient (but undefined) part of it to enable him to operate a viable farming business on it after the death of his parents.
3. What if anything can the law do for Andrew? There is no contract between them which Andrew can enforce. The farm was not put into trust for the parents for life with remainder to be shared between Andrew, Ross and Jan. The Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 is unlikely to assist Andrew because he can still earn a living. Anyway his parents may have many years to live. And the farmhouse is their home. Most people would think that Andrew has been very unfairly treated by his father, but many would also think it strange if the court were to require David to give Andrew a viable share of the farm now, when he had promised to do so only upon his and his wife’s death. Why should Andrew receive a share of the farm earlier than he had been promised it, because of a family dispute for which he may have been no less to blame (if blame is the right word at all) than his father?
4. Providing a remedy for Andrew is a task for which the courts have recourse to equitable principles. One of the principal functions of equity is to put right injustice to which the law is otherwise blind, by restraining the rigid application of legal rules where their implementation would be unconscionable. Two legal rules are engaged here. The first is that a promise is not enforceable unless it is made part of a contract. The second is that a person is free to change his will until he dies (or loses mental capacity to do so). David was, in accordance with those rules both free to renege upon his promise to Andrew, and to do so both by evicting him and then changing his will. But equity may in such circumstances provide the promisee (here Andrew) with a remedy if a promise has been made to confer property upon him in the future, (or an informal assurance that the property is already his) in reliance upon which he has acted to his detriment. The remedy is called proprietary estoppel. The word “proprietary” reflects the fact that the remedy is all about promises to confer interests in property, usually land. The perhaps quaint word “estoppel” encapsulates the notion that the equitable wrong which has been threatened or done is the repudiation of the promise where it would be unconscionable for the promisor to do. So the equitable remedy is to restrain, or stop or “estop” the promisor from reneging on the promise. The court may require the promise to be performed by the promisor or, if he has died in the meantime, by or at the cost of his estate. It may in limited circumstances affect successors in title of the promisor to the relevant property.
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