State of play: case summaries

Judge Barling’s judgment in this case is noteworthy because he defined the test to determine when a couple are living in the
same household.

Under section 1(1A) of the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, a person living in the same household as the deceased as man and wife for two years immediately prior to the date of death is entitled to make a claim for financial provision from the deceased’s estate. The central issue in this case was the definition of ‘living in the same household’ for the requisite two-year period.

The claimant and the deceased had formed a relationship soon after the deceased’s wife’s death (she had taken her own life and the deceased was acquitted of her manslaughter). They became engaged and began living together in the same house for three months. It was not in dispute that this period satisfied the conditions for cohabitation in the Act.

During this period the claimant gave up her job to work seven days a week with the deceased in his cafe. There was then a period of eight to nine months in which the claimant and the deceased did not live together in the same house, while the deceased focused on rebuilding his relationship with his sons and wider family in India following
his acquittal.

The couple resumed living together for a continuous period of one year and 49 weeks before the deceased’s death, three weeks short of the requisite two-year period. The claimant was not mentioned in the deceased’s will and the deceased’s sons opposed her claim.

At first instance, Judge Powles QC held that the disputed three-month period was relevant to the length of the couple’s relationship, and therefore that the claimant was entitled to financial support under section 1(1A). The defendants appealed, contending that the judge had erred in his ruling. Judge Barling upheld the trial judge’s decision, and while doing so, he defined the test to determine when couples were living in the same household.

Adopting the principle of a non-literal approach established in In Re Dix (deceased) [2004] EWCA Civ 139 by the Court of Appeal, Judge Barling distinguished between the notion of living in the same household and living in the same house. Whether the couple shared a household relies on the nature of the relationship between them and whether this ‘subsists’, despite the couple living in different places. This is because a household is considered a public and private acknowledgement of their mutual “society... protection and support”. Thus, the household will be shared if the relationship is maintained and a short period during which the couple live apart will not be a barrier.

Judge Barling held that, on the facts, it was evident that the claimant and the deceased did share a household in this wider sense. The judge drew particular attention to the fact the couple worked together daily in the deceased’s cafe and that the brief separate living arrangements were caused by separate and unrelated family reasons.

A lack of actual cohabitation for three weeks was therefore not sufficient to defeat the claimant’s claim that she was entitled to apply for financial provision from the deceased’s estate.

Heather Viljoen, pictured, is a solicitor at Michelmores and Karen Bayley is a solicitor at Barlow Robbins