An estate brought an application seeking an order dispensing with service on a missing co-owner and a vesting order declaring the estate the legal and beneficial owner of a property.
The property had been purchased decades earlier by the deceased and the respondent as joint tenants, but the respondent had vacated the property and had not been heard from for over thirty years.
The deceased remained in exclusive possession of the property, paid all expenses, and treated the property as his own throughout that period.
Applying the principles of adverse possession and s. 11 of the Real Property Limitations Act, the court held that possession by one joint tenant can found a claim against another.
The court inferred the deceased’s intention to exclude the absent co-owner and granted a vesting order in favour of the estate.
