Does a spouse's relationship with the other spouse affect the presumption of resulting trust in the transferor and the transferee?

British Columbia, Canada


The following excerpt is from Bilin v Sidhu, 2022 BCSC 399 (CanLII):

In certain circumstances, the relationship between the transferor and transferee will cause the presumption of resulting trust to be displaced by the presumption of advancement (that a gift was intended), which has been historically applied where the transferor and the transferee are spouses: Pecore v. Pecore, 2007 SCC 17 at para. 86.

With respect to both of these rebuttable evidentiary presumptions, Justice Savage in Namdarpour v. Vahman, 2019 BCCA 153 at para. 40 stated: 40 These decisions emphasize that evidentiary presumptions operate only where the trial judge is unable to reach a conclusion about the transferor's actual intention at the time of transfer. In my view, the following principles can be discerned from the case law: (1) a conclusion about intention is only to be determined after consideration of "all the circumstances" of the case; (2) those circumstances include both direct evidence and, importantly, circumstantial evidence; (3) those circumstances include evidence that arose subsequent to a transfer if r levant to the transferor's intent at the time of transfer, although such evidence will be reviewed critically; and (4) only where a judge is unable to reach a conclusion about the transferor's actual intention will the evidentiary presumption operate.

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