Robert Walker J considered how a court should decide on whether a person was in actual occupation of a house: ‘Whether a person’s intermittent presence at a house which is fully furnished, and ready for almost immediate use, should be seen as continuous occupation marked (but not interrupted) by occasional absences, or whether it should be seen as a pattern of alternating periods of presence and absence, is a matter of perception which defies deep analysis. Not only the length of any absence, but also the reason for it, may be material (a holiday or a business trip may be easier to reconcile with continuing and unbroken occupation than a move to a second home, even though the duration is the same in each case). But there must come a point at which a person’s absence from his house is so prolonged that the notion of his continuing to be in actual occupation of it becomes insupportable; and in my judgment that point must have been reached in this case, long before Mr Dawkins visited the house on 4 January 1990 (and still more so, long before 20 February 1990). By then Princess Madawi had not set foot in the property for over a year: she had for over a year been living with her mother in the Islamic household at Riyadh.’
Citations:
[1995] LTL
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Link Lending Ltd v Bustard CA 23-Apr-2010
The respondent had been detained in a secure mental unit for a year. In that time her home was charged to the appellant. She asserted that she had been a person in actual occupation. The chargee now appealed against a finding that the respondent had . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Land
Updated: 02 May 2022; Ref: scu.408605