Mehar Singh Bhangra & Anor v Baljinder Singh Bhangra

_________________ Application on Form RX1 to cancel Form A restriction registered against the title by the Applicants on 30 th December 2003. In the alternative, application for alteration of the register to remove restriction. Applicants claim they have a beneficial interest in the property by virtue of contributions to the mortgage and substantial works which they have carried out to the property. Respondent claims he is the sole beneficial owner Cases referred to: Stack v Dowden [2007] 2 AC 432

1. The Applicants are the parents of the Respondent. On 30 th December 2003, the Applicants registered a restriction against the freehold title of 296 Green Lane, Ilford, Essex, 1G1 1YD (“the Property”) which is registered in the sole name of the Respondent. The restriction provides that: “No disposition by a sole proprietor of the registered estate (except a trust corporation) under which capital monies arises is to be registered unless authorised by an order of the court”.

2. On 13 th September 2023, the Respondent applied to the Land Registry for the cancellation of the restriction. On 17 th January 2024, the Respondent applied to alter the register so as to remove the restriction. The Applicants objected to that application and the dispute was transferred to this Tribunal on 20 th September 2024.

3. Both parties were unrepresented although the Applicants were assisted by their daughter, Gurminder Kaur Bhangra (“Gurminder”) in the presentation of their case. I am grateful to both parties for the courtesy with which they presented their cases.

4. This Tribunal’s jurisdiction is limited to determining whether the Applicants have a beneficial interest in the Property which warrants the retention of the restriction registered against the title. The Tribunal does not have jurisdiction to determine the quantum of any beneficial interest.

5. On 7 th November 2025, the First Applicant issued a claim in the County Court seeking a declaration that he, the Second Applicant, the Respondent, Gurminder and Mrs Sarabjit Kaur Flora (“Sarabjit”) all have a beneficial interest in the Property as they had all contributed towards it, either at the time of the purchase and/or by way of contributions financially towards the mortgage or otherwise and/or in kind by way of renovation or refurbishment works. On the same day the Applicants applied for an adjournment of this hearing pending the outcome of those proceedings. They relied on Rules 38 and 39 of The Tribunal Procedure (First-Tier Tribunal) (Property Chamber) Rules 2013.

6. At the start of the hearing, the Applicants made representations in respect of their stay application which was opposed by the Respondent. The Respondent had not been served with the County Court claim which involved additional parties to those in this application. Rule 38 requires the party commencing Court proceedings to provide the Tribunal and the other parties with written notice. Rule 39 imposes an automatic stay if the Tribunal has directed that Court proceedings be commenced. This was not the case here and Rule 39 did not apply.

7. Although the Tribunal has power under its general case management powers to stay proceedings, in my judgment this would not be an appropriate course of action in this case. The Tribunal’s powers are limited to deciding whether the Applicants’ have a beneficial interest in the Property at all whereas the Court is being asked to determine that five parties have a beneficial interest and the size of those interests. The two cases relate to different issues. In any event, the application for the stay was made far too late. Both parties have prepared for the final hearing and the question of whether the Applicants’ restriction should remain on the title needs to be resolved.

8. The Respondent’s case, in summary, is that he is the sole legal and beneficial owner of the Property and has paid the whole of the mortgage since the acquisition of the Property. The Applicants’ case is that the Property was a family home with all parties contributing to its acquisition, mortgage and development and that they have a beneficial interest in it.

9. I heard evidence from all of the parties. In addition, I heard evidence on behalf of the Applicants from their two daughters, Gurminder and Sarabjit; Mr. Gewan Lalsingh Mahabir (who was originally the joint owner of the Property); and Mr. Nikith Kumar Konagala (who lived in the Property from 2019 for two years). I also heard evidence from the Respondent’s wife, Sarminder Kaur Bhangra. Chronology

10. The Respondent was born on 17 th February 1970 and was 24 years old when the Property was purchased on 3 rd February 1995. There is no dispute that the Property was bought as a family home for the Applicants, the Respondent and his two sisters, Gurminder and Sarabjit. It is necessary to look at the earlier history in order to understand why the Property was registered as it was.

11. The First Applicant came to the United Kingdom in November 1975 and originally worked for big construction companies as an electrical engineer. Eventually he set up his own construction company with his wife’s cousin. In 1981, the Applicants purchased a 5 bedroom property in Seven Kings jointly with the First Applicant’s brother. The First Applicant’s business was successful enabling him to purchase expensive cars and invest in a second property for redevelopment. The Second Applicant was, at all times, in employment.

12. Unfortunately, the First Applicant’s business was hit by the 1990’s recession and the First Applicant was unable to sell the second property. As a result of the decline in business, the First Applicant was made bankrupt by HMRC and the family home was repossessed. The family moved into rental accommodation. The Applicants subsequently brought successful proceedings against Barclays Bank for selling their family home at an undervalue. All members of the family described this period as being a very difficult and upsetting time.

13. In or around late 1994, the Applicants decided they wanted to buy a new home and the Applicants went to see a mortgage broker. A letter dated 24 th August 1994 addressed to the Applicants confirms this meeting and that they paid the broker’s administration fee. The Applicants then began looking for a suitable property and eventually the Property was found through the First Applicant’s cousin. The Respondent accepted that he did not find the Property. As both parents were working, Gurminder and the Respondent carried out the first viewing and thereafter the Applicants went to have a look. They liked the Property and went back to the mortgage broker who explained that, as a result of the First Applicant’s credit history and the fact that he had been made bankrupt 4 years earlier, a guarantor would be required. The Applicants asked their friend, Gee Mahabir if he could act as guarantor and he agreed.

14. Mr Mahabir gave evidence and explained that he had known the First Applicant for 40 years and regularly dined at the Applicants’ home. He said he was approached by the First Applicant for help with the purchase and he agreed to help and support the Applicants. He said he had no contact with the Respondent and did not agree to help him with purchasing the property.

15. It is the Applicants’ case that, up until this point, the Respondent had not been involved in the proposed purchase. However, on a subsequent visit to the mortgage broker, the broker advised the Applicants to include a family member’s name on the title. The Applicants therefore decided that the Respondent’s name should be on the title along with Mr. Mahabir.

16. The Second Applicant then took out a loan with Lloyd’s Bank in order to pay the deposit – part of the loan document in her name has been disclosed together with wage slips showing that the Second Applicant was in employment at that time. The Respondent said in his original witness statement in support of his application that he acknowledged that his father had paid the deposit of £4,275 which equated to approximately 5% of the purchase price. In his more recent witness statement, he said that he initially believed his father paid the deposit but now, having seen a receipt which states “Received from Mr. Bhangra the sum of £2,925.50 case 2.2.95” he “confirms” that he (the Respondent) paid the deposit although he can’t say with certainty how the remainder of the deposit was paid. Clearly the “Mr. Bhangra” referred to could be either the First Applicant or the Respondent. As this would have been a significant sum for a 24 year old to pay and the Respondent cannot recall paying it whereas the Applicants can, it seems more likely that it was paid by Mr. Bhangra senior with his wife’s loan monies.

17. The Applicants instructed Ashley Bean Solicitors, who were already acting for them in their litigation against Barclays Bank, to carry out the conveyancing. On 24 th January 1995, Ashley Bean wrote to the Respondent and Mr. Mahabir setting out the details of the purchase. The completion statement shows that Ashley Bean had received a deposit of £4,275 and that the mortgage was for £81,000. The mortgage was an interest only mortgage with Alliance & Leicester and the monthly payments began at £267.71. The mortgage required the borrowers to take out an endowment policy to meet the capital but details of the endowment policy were not disclosed.

18. On the same day Ashley Bean wrote to the Applicants and their daughters requiring them to sign an agreement postponing any rights they might have in the property in favour of Alliance & Leicester which they did.

19. The First Applicant stated that, at the time of the purchase, all three of the Applicants’ children were still at University. They were not employed and were financially dependent on the Applicants. The Second Applicant, Gurminder and Sarabjit also stated that the Respondent was still at University at the time of the purchase. The Respondent said in his witness statement that at the time of the purchase his parents, his two sisters and himself were all experiencing financial hardship. He also said that at the time of the purchase he was not in a position to obtain the mortgage on his own. The Respondent did not state in his witness statement what he was doing in February 1995 or whether he had any funds with which to meet the mortgage.

20. In oral evidence the Respondent claimed that in late 1994 (aged 24) he got a job as a site manager just after finishing his studies. He could not recall what the salary was but said it was probably not great. The Respondent did not produce any documentary evidence to show he was in employment at that time.

21. The Respondent confirmed that he did not attend the first meeting with the mortgage broker and that he was only introduced to him by his father. It was also his father who got Mr. Mahabir and Ashley Bean Solicitors involved. The Property was duly purchased in the joint names of Mr. Mahabir and the Respondent as beneficial joint tenants on 3 rd February 1995 for £85,500.

22. It was common ground that shortly afterwards (sometime between 1997 and 1998) the Respondent moved to Australia for a long break although the length of that break was disputed. The Applicants say he was away for 18 months whereas the Respondent says the break was much shorter. It was at this point that the Respondent met his wife.

23. On 11 th August 2000, at the Respondent’s request, Mr Mahabir transferred his interest into the Respondent’s sole name for nil consideration with the consent of the Alliance & Leicester. Presumably the building society was satisfied by that date that the Respondent could meet the mortgage payments. Subsequent correspondence from the Applicants confirms that they were aware of this transfer.

24. On 2 nd March 2001, the Respondent re-mortgaged the Property to secure a loan from the Royal Bank of Scotland totalling £87,890. The Respondent said that he changed the mortgage from an endowment to an interest only mortgage. Again, the Applicants and their daughters entered into Deeds of Consent whereby any rights they had in the Property were postponed to those of the bank.

25. On 19 th November 2003, the Respondent re-mortgaged the Property again to Abbey National to secure a loan of £153,000. This time, he did not tell his parents. At around this time, the Second Applicant says she found a note-pad where the Respondent appeared to have been practicing the Applicants’ signatures and the Applicants became concerned about the Respondent’s intentions. In December 2003, having become aware of the re-mortgage, the Applicants applied to the Land Registry to register a restriction against the title. They confirmed in their letter of 22 nd December 2003 that they had “agreed and authorised” the earlier transfer of the Property in the Respondent’s sole name.

26. The restriction was duly registered on 30 th December 2003 before the Abbey National charge was registered. In March 2004, solicitors instructed by the Respondent wrote to the Applicants to inform them that they were corresponding with the Land Registry asking them to warn off the restriction. It appears that nothing further happened in relation to this and the Abbey National (now Santander) charge remains unregistered. It was only 13 years later, in May 2017, that the Respondent again instructed solicitors to write to his parents demanding the withdrawal of the restriction so that the Santander charge could be registered and that the Applicants postpone their rights to Santander. They did not do so. The Respondent’s application to cancel the restriction was not issued until 13 th September 2023, nearly 20 years after it had been registered. The Mortgage Payments

27. It is the Applicants’ case that in the initial years of the mortgage, the instalments were paid by the First Applicant from his self-employed earnings and by the Second Applicant from her wages. In the early years the three children had no earnings but once they returned home they each made a contribution from their part-time jobs. They say that during the period the Respondent was in Australia he made no contribution towards the mortgage.

28. The Respondent claims that he was solely responsible for meeting the mortgage payments and struggled to keep up with them experiencing ongoing financial hardship and frequent arrears throughout the term. The Respondent has disclosed cheque stubs for the period between 1 st December 1999 and 3 rd November 2003 – most of the payments are for about £500. He has also produced a selection of receipts from Alliance & Leicester showing that the sums were paid by the Respondent. However, it is not in dispute that the monies were paid to the lender from the Respondent’s account, the issue is who provided the monies to pay those sums?

29. The Applicants’ evidence was that, on his return from Australia, the Respondent called a family meeting and said that he wanted everyone to pay money directly to him as a collective pot to pay the mortgage and other household expenditure. He drafted a schedule and told the Applicants and their daughters that they each needed to pay £250 per month to him to cover the mortgage and the household expenses. Sarabjit set up a direct debit and Gurminder paid him £250 cash every month from her salary. The family members each took responsibility for particular household expenses. The costs of decorating and buying new furniture were also shared.

30. Neither party produced any bank statements showing monies transferring between them but this is perhaps unsurprising given that it was 30 years ago. Similarly, no evidence of earnings during this period was produced by any of the parties except the Second Applicant who disclosed various wage slips. Her income was modest but steady.

31. Having listened to all the witnesses, I am satisfied that the Property was intended to be a home for all of the family members and that the intention was that all of them would contribute towards the mortgage and upkeep. The Respondent accepted that he was not in a position to obtain the mortgage on his own. Even if the Respondent was working in February 1995, on his own case this was his first job and he had only been working for a few months. In my judgment, it is highly unlikely that the intention was that the 24-year-old Respondent would buy a five bedroom house for his family and be solely responsible for meeting the outgoings. The Respondent stated in evidence that his father had got Mr. Mahabir involved because he was not able to pay the mortgage on his own. Mr. Mahabir did not make any payments towards the mortgage so the shortfall must have been paid by someone else.

32. I find that during the early years, the Applicants, the Respondents, Sarabjit and Gurminder all contributed towards the mortgage. At some point the Applicants and their daughters stopped contributing to the mortgage and there was no evidence that they had made any contributions at all in recent years. It may be that payments stopped when the re-mortgage was taken out in 2003. I make no findings as to exactly when they stopped contributing. Works to the Property

33. It was not in dispute that following the purchase, extensive works were carried out to the Property or that the majority of works were carried out by the First Applicant himself. Those works included (but are not limited to): (1) Replacing the central heating system including a new boiler and new radiators; (2) Re-wiring the whole house (3) Double glazing the whole house (4) Constructing a rear kitchen extension (5) Replacing the kitchen twice (6) Levelling the garden (7) Refitting the bathrooms (8) Insulating the loft. (9) Rebuilding the garage

34. The Respondent claimed to have spent the majority of the £70,000 obtained on the remortgage on works to the Property. The Applicants claim he spent the money on an Audi and a BMW. The Applicants say that the First Applicant did the vast majority of the works himself with the Respondent just providing left-over materials from other building projects. The Applicants claimed that they had paid for most of the building materials, in particular, they paid for the Magnet kitchen which was installed.

35. There was some debate as to how much each of the parties had paid towards building materials but I find that both parties contributed. I also find that the works were substantial with the majority of the labour being provided by the First Applicant. The works carried out have added to the value of the Property. The Law

36. The issue for this Tribunal to decide is whether the Applicants have a beneficial interest in the Property. The legal title is registered in the sole name of the Respondent and the starting point is that the beneficial interest follows the legal title, in other words, it lies with the Respondent. The burden of showing otherwise is on the Applicants.

37. In this case, there is no written declaration of trust. However, a trust can arise by virtue of a constructive trust where both parties intended that, even though only one of them holds the legal title, the property would be shared beneficially. The party claiming that such a trust exists must prove that this shared intention existed and that he or she relied on that intention to their detriment, making it inequitable for the sole owner to deny the interest.

38. The search is to ascertain the parties’ shared intentions, actual, inferred or imputed with respect to the property in the light of their whole course of conduct in relation to it – as per Baroness Hale in Stack v Dowden [2007] UKHL 17 . The conduct from which intention may be inferred is broad. Indirect financial input, or paying for or undertaking substantial works, can reveal a common intention and also amount to the “detriment” needed for a constructive trust. That detriment covers financial or comparable commitments that a person would not reasonably make unless he believed he had a stake in the property; it excludes things which the party claiming the interest would have done anyway, irrespective of ownership. The acts of detrimental reliance must be of a kind upon which the applicant cannot have been expected to embark unless he/she had an interest in the property. Conclusions

39. I have made the following findings of fact: (1) the Property was purchased to provide a home for the Applicants, the Respondent, Gurminder and Sarabjit. (2) the Applicants initiated the purchase. (3) at the date of purchase, the Respondent was not in a position to fund the purchase himself or to meet the whole of the mortgage payments. (4) the Second Applicant paid the deposit. (5) all of the parties contributed towards the mortgage payments in the early years – probably until about 2002. (6) the First Applicant has carried out substantial works to the Property since its purchase which have improved it considerably. Most of the labour for these works was done himself. (7) the Applicants paid the majority of the costs of the materials for those works.

40. In my judgement, the whole course of dealing in relation to the Property indicates that it was always the intention of the parties that the Applicants would have a beneficial interest in the Property. The Applicants found the Property, developed the Property and have lived in the Property throughout. It was the Applicants who asked Mr. Mahabir to take the title in his name and the Applicants who suggested that the Respondent’s name should also be on the title. The nature of the works carried out is such that the Applicants would not have embarked on these works unless they believed they had an interest in the Property. I do not find it credible that the parties’ intention was for the 24 year-old Respondent to purchase and be solely responsible for the outgoings in relation to the Property in order to provide his parents with a home.

41. I am satisfied that the Applicants have a beneficial interest in the Property and that they are entitled to the registration of the restriction to protect their interest. Accordingly, I will direct the Chief Land Registrar to dismiss the Respondent’s application for the cancellation of the Applicants’ restriction dated 30 th December 2003. I will also dismiss the Respondent’s application for the alteration of the register so as to remove the restrictions. Costs

42. The usual rule is that the unsuccessful party should pay the successful party’s costs of this application from the date the matter was transferred to this Tribunal. My preliminary view is that the Respondent should pay the Applicants’ costs, if any, on the standard basis.

43. Any party who wishes to make an application for costs should file and serve by email (a) written submissions on the principle of who should pay costs and upon what basis (not on the amount of the costs claimed at this stage) and (b) provide an estimate of the total costs claimed, on the Tribunal and on the other party by 5 pm on 30 th January 2026.

44. If such costs application is served, then the recipient should file and serve by 5 pm on 13 th February 2026 their submissions in response.

45. The party applying for costs may then file and serve a brief response by no later than 5 pm on 27 th February 2026.

46. The Tribunal will then give its decision on who should pay costs and make any further directions in relation to the determination of those costs. Judge Nicola Muir Dated 16 th January 2026 BY ORDER OF THE TRIBUNAL.