Wife v trustee in bankruptcy

Mountney v Treharne (CA LSG 10 October p38)

The day after the district judge in ancillary relief proceedings ordered the husband to transfer all his interest in the former matrimonial home to his wife, the husband was made bankrupt. The husband’s trustee in bankruptcy obtained a declaration that the home vested in him was free from any rights of the wife. In allowing the wife’s appeal from that order, the court held that the rule that an order which directed a party to provide security and contemplated the completion of the security by the execution of the appropriate deed, created an immediate equitable charge, provided that the property the subject of the charge could be sufficiently identified, was directly applicable to an order made pursuant to s24(1)(a) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. Therefore, the order in the present case had the effect of conferring on the wife an equitable interest in the property at the moment when the order took effect; and therefore the trustee in bankruptcy took subject to the wife’s equitable interest under the order pursuant to s283(5) of the Insolvency Act 1986. The wife was therefore entitled to enforce the order against the trustee.