SEVERANCE OF JOINT TENANCIES
This article is an update on a recent development of the law in this area subsequent to the author’s previous article entitled “Severance of Joint Tenancies”, and located on disinherited.com.
Joint tenancy is a method in which two or more persons may hold property together, with the unique feature that one of the owners dies, his or her interest automatically passes to the survivor(s) by right of survivorship.
Severance is the legal process of converting a joint tenancy arrangement into a tenancy in common. The latter method of ownership does not have the automatic right of survivorship that the joint tenancy has.
Accordingly there is an increasing trend in both estate and family litigation to carefully examine whether the joint tenants, often spouses, acted in a course of conduct that intimated that the interests of the joint owners were mutually treated as constituting a tenancy in common. The financial rewards of whether or not a parcel of real property devolves on death to a surviving joint tenant, or alternatively that the deceased’s one half portion of the property in a tenancy in common passes to his or her estate pursuant to a will are huge.
It may well be, if examined closely, that the parties have even unwittingly indicated at some point in time that the ownership of jointly held property should be treated as a tenancy in common rather than as a joint tenancy with right of survivorship (JTROS)
THE ONTARIO CASES
Hansenv Hansen Estate 2012 9 RFL (7th) 251,75 ETR (3d) 19, a decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal, is a decision which dictates close observance. As of the date of publication of this article it has not yet been applied or considered in British Columbia, and has only been subsequently distinguished in Ontario by the subsequent Su v Lam decision which follows.
The Ontario Court of Appeal followed the chestnut decision relating to the severance of joint tenancies, Williams v. Hensman (1861) 70 E.R. 862 for these three manners in which joint tenancies may be suffered namely;
1. Unilaterally, by acting on one’s own account, such as selling or encumbering one’s share;
2. by mutual agreement between the co-owners to sever the joint tenancy;
3. any course of dealing sufficient to intimate that the interests of all were mutually treated as constituting a tenancy in common (the course of dealing rule).
Mr. and Mrs. Hansen married for the second time in 1983. Both had children from previous relationships. In 2003 they purchased a property as joint tenants. Financial and marital troubles subsequently ensued with Mrs. Hansen moving out of the home in March 2010.
The husband retained a lawyer with respect to this marital breakdown and he was instructed to prepare a new will for him leaving everything to his daughters and nothing to his wife.
Mrs. Hansen also retained a lawyer who sent a letter to the husband’s lawyer indicating a desire to negotiate a separation agreement including a division of the property.
The parties began to close their joint bank accounts, and prepared financial statements for exchange in furtherance of their settlement negotiations, but before settlement could be finalized Mr. Hansen suddenly died.
Mrs. Hansen asserted a right of survivorship in the home and took the position that is a surviving joint tenant she was entitled to the entirety of the property.
The executors of the deceased’s will applied to the court for a declaration that the widow was entitled to only an undivided one half interest in the property by reason of the fact that the parties course of dealing had served to sever the joint tenancy.
Mrs. Hansen won at trial, but Court of Appeal overturned that decision, and pronounced that with respect to the application of the course of dealing just in Ontario:
1. severance by course of dealing does not require proof of an explicit intention to sever the joint tenancy – the mutual intention can be inferred from the course of dealing between the parties and does not require evidence of agreement;
2. severance by course of dealing does not require that each owner knew of the others position and that both treated their interest in the property as no longer being held jointly – this could be inferred from communications or conduct;
3. the determination is an inherently fact specific assessment;
4. the purpose of severance by course of dealing is to ensure that one owner does not unfairly obtain the benefit of the right of survivorship where the parties have shown a common intention to no longer treat their interests in the property as an indivisible unified whole.
The appeal court in fact stated that the trial judge erred in not appreciating the facts that the parties, amongst other things, prepared a new will, negotiated a division of their assets, and they opened separate bank accounts, acts that were sufficient conduct to sever the joint tenancy.
As stated by Chief Justice Winkler at paragraph 7:
” the court’s inquiry cannot be limited to matching fact patterns to those in prior cases. Rather, the court must look to the co-owners’ entire course of conduct – in other words the totality of the evidence – in order to determine if they intended that their interests were mutually treated as constituting a tenancy in common. The evidence may manifest itself in different ways. Each case is idiosyncratic and will turn on its own facts”.
Prior to Hansen, the Ontario law had been In Re Walters (1977) 16 O.R. (2d) 702, affirmed 17 OR (2d) 592, (Ont. CA), where the court held that a severance had been affected through the couples’ course of conduct where they had negotiated to buy each other’s interests in the matrimonial home in the course of their separation.
British Columbia Law
Hansen Estateis of notable surprise to British Columbia practitioners by reason of a 1993 BC Appeal Court decision Tompkins Estate v. Tompkins, Vancouver Registry CA 015039, which had contrarily held that in order to satisfy the “course of dealing” test, one party must detrimentally rely on the others representation that he or she no longer wants to hold the property jointly.
In other words, in British Columbia, the current law is that the party asserting that the joint tenancy has been severed, must prove not only that both parties treated their interests as separate, but also that they relied on the other parties representations or actions so that it would now be unjust for the other party to assert that joint tenancy.
The Ontario court in Hansen, held that such detrimental reliance was not necessary and the test could be satisfied simply by virtue of each party being aware of the other’s intentions and by both parties treating their interests in the property is no longer being held jointly.
By BC standards, the Ontario Court of Appeal found severance of the joint tenancy on rather marginal evidence of intention to mutually treat their matrimonial home as a tenancy in common.
The Ontario Court of Appeal however has traditionally been regarded as very persuasive throughout the Canadian courts, and it should not be a surprise if the BC Courts adopt the reasoning of Hansen in future, especially if given the right facts to do so.
The second Ontario decision of Su v Lam 2012 77 E.T.R. (3d) 278, (Ont. SCJ), applied Hansen and stated that the mutual intention of the parties as demonstrated by their conduct, must be assessed, and that the intention must be mutual.
On her death in 2004 the testator left her estate to her two grown children and appointed her estranged spouse as executor. In other legal proceedings, the plaintiff was found to be the testator’s common-law husband and that the testator had a legal obligation to provide support to him upon her death. Prior to the testator’s death she owned to real estate investments in joint tenancy with her estranged husband.
The common-law spouse argued that the joint tenancies between the deceased and her estranged husband had been severed prior to her death, and that the value of the properties constituted an undistributed residue of her estate.
The court found that there had not been any severance of the joint tenancies, as the testator had not acted on her own share with respect to the joint tenancies, nor had there been any mutual agreement existing between her and her estranged husband to sever the joint tenancies.
There is a high threshold that exists to show joint tenancies are severed through a course of conduct between the testator or her estranged husband and the mere fact that the testator and the estranged husband are separated is insufficient to establish severance.
When the parties liquidated their real estate holdings after their separation, neither the testator nor her estranged husband conducted their affairs in a way to suggest that in doing that the joint tendencies had been terminated. No evidence existed that the testator or the estranged husband had entered into negotiations the ownership following the test their separation. The fact that the testator maintain the properties without assistance from the estranged husband was not of its own, evidence of severance. Accordingly upon the testator’s death the properties became owned by the estranged husband by right of survivorship.
CONCLUSION
The continuing meld of estate, real property and family law principles all come to fore when examining whether or not the course of dealings of parties to a joint tenancy ownership have or have not resulted in a severance of a JTROS. It is reasonably common for parties, married or otherwise, to have disputes and perhaps enter into a course of dealings that might appear to treat jointly held properties as tenancies in common, that may subsequently be forgotten about and a reconciliation achieved only to have argued many years later in an estate litigation dispute, that the course of dealings many years prior had the effect of severing the joint tenancy of property now worth millions. Most spousal joint tenants simply do not appreciate the legal consequences that one or more of the following acts, may result in a severance of a JTROS property:
1. closing joint bank accounts and opening separate accounts;
2. preparing a new will disposing of the property, to the exclusion of the other,
3. the expression of an intention to negotiate a division of property, including the subject property;
4. one owner vacating the premises;
5. the intention expressed to litigate if a settlement cannot be reached;
6. the requirement of one party buying out the other’s interest as a condition to stay in the property;
7. the expressed intention to appraise the property for negotiation purposes.
The Hansen case giv
