The High Court has rejected a claim by a clothing designer's partner for financial provision from his estate, finding that it had not been demonstrated that they had lived together as a married couple for the required period of two years before the designer's death.
The designer had been born in China in 1969. He had spent time in New Zealand before coming to London in 2003 to study fashion. He and his partner had run a womenswear design business. They had bought a property together in 2012, which they had owned as beneficial joint tenants. In 2015 the designer had made a will leaving a quarter share in another property to his partner, with the rest of his estate going to his family. He passed away in 2017.
His partner claimed that he had a 50 per cent interest in the property in which he had been left a quarter share, as well as another property the designer had owned. He also brought a claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 for reasonable financial provision from the designer's estate.
He claimed that he and the designer had operated both personally and professionally as a single indivisible unit, sharing their income and property equally. However, the Court found that he had no beneficial interest in the two properties. The designer had funded their purchase and had described them as his when giving instructions for his will. He had been well aware that the property he and his partner had bought together was a different case: as they had owned it as joint tenants, the will did not need to make any provision about it.
Turning to the claim for financial provision, the Court noted that it was necessary to show that the designer had been domiciled in England and Wales and that he and his partner had lived in the same household as a married couple or as civil partners.
The designer had had strong relationships with his family in China and had spent time there. He had continued to have a strong connection to New Zealand and had described himself as a New Zealander when he had first enquired about making a will in 2011. While he had had connections to England and Wales through his businesses and property in London and his relationship with his partner, there was little other evidence that he had regarded this country as his permanent home. Accordingly, the Court did not consider that he had acquired a domicile of choice in England and Wales.
It seemed to the Court that the designer had viewed his relationship in a more equivocal way than his partner had. He had presented it to his family as one of business colleagues and had done the same in correspondence with his solicitors, including in discussions about his will. He had consciously kept much of his residential property in his sole name. There was some evidence that the relationship was presented to a limited number of people as equivalent to one of marriage but, weighed against the other evidence, it was not enough to satisfy the Court that they had lived together in the same household as a married couple.