Dillwyn v Llwellyn
| Dillwyn v Llewelyn | |
|---|---|
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| Citation(s) | [1862] EWHC Ch J67, (1862) 4 De G F & J 517 |
| Keywords | |
| Contract, proprietary estoppel, deed, imperfect gift | |
Dillwyn v Llewelyn [1862] EWHC Ch J67 is an English contract law case concerning proprietary estoppel.
In 1853 a father (Lewis Weston Dillwyn, who lived at Sketty Hall) wished to give his younger son (Lewis Llewelyn Dillwyn) an estate at Hendrefoilan in Wales, and thought he had done so by signing a memorandum presenting it to him “for the purpose of furnishing himself with a dwelling-house”. The memorandum was unfortunately not a deed. The son incurred great expense in building himself a house on the land. Two years later the father died and the elder son (John Dillwyn Llewelyn) disputed his younger brother's title.
Sir John Romilly MR decreed that the younger son was entitled to a life interest, worth £14,000.
Lord Westbury LC held that the younger son did not have merely an incomplete gift, but was in fact entitled to call for a legal conveyance, and not merely of a life-estate, but of the whole fee-simple. He said the following.
The Master of the Rolls, however, seems to have thought that a question might still remain as to the extent of the estate taken by the donee, and that in this particular case the extent of the donee's interest depended on the terms of the memorandum. I am not of that opinion. The equity of the donee and the estate to be claimed by virtue of it depend on the transaction, that is, on the acts done, and not on the language of the memorandum, except as that shews the purpose and intent of the gift. The estate was given as the site of a dwelling-house to be erected by the son. The ownership of the dwelling-house and the ownership of the estate must be considered as intended to be co-extensive and co-equal. No one builds a house for his own life only, and it is absurd to suppose that it was intended by either party that the house, at the death of the son, should become the property of the father. If, therefore, I am right in the conclusion of law that the subsequent expenditure by the son, with the approbation of the father, supplied a valuable consideration originally wanting, the memorandum signed by the father and son must be thenceforth regarded as an agreement for the soil extending to the fee-simple of the land. In a contract for sale of an estate no words of limitation are necessary to include the fee-simple; but, further, upon the construction of the memorandum itself, taken apart from the subsequent acts, I should be of opinion that it was the plain intention of the testator to vest in the son the absolute ownership of the estate. The only inquiry therefore is, whether the son's expenditure on the faith of the memorandum supplied a valuable consideration and created a binding obligation. On this I have no doubt; and it therefore follows that the intention to give the fee-simple must be performed, and that the decree ought to declare the son the absolute owner of the estate comprised in the memorandum.
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