Does Marriage Mean Everything Is 50/50 Or Is Mine Mine And Yours Ours?

Does marriage mean everything is 50/50? Certainly not. Whether that lends credence to the proposition “my money is my money but your money is our money” that can sometimes be ventilated with alacrity, is another matter. Perhaps the odds on the 50/50 might be better.

The 50/50 concept was however rejected in White v. White [2000] UKHL 54 (“White”) that Section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 meant:

… a presumption of equal division would go beyond the permissible bounds of interpretation of section 25 …

The 50/50 Concept

Nevertheless, the 50/50 concept is not without its cheerleaders, at least perhaps for when marriages manage to stay out of the court system (around a healthy 60% of them); otherwise, the House of Lords might not have needed to pepper its judgment in White so extensively with reference to it.

However, this fact did not assist Mrs Rahman (“the defendant”) in Manolete Partners PLC v Rahman & Ors [2025] EWHC 1384 (Ch) (“Rahman”), a case not extracted from an AI citation but rather more reliably plucked from Bailii, following its recent sprouting.

Manolete (“the claimant”) were seeking orders for sale on three properties in the sole name of Mr Rahman, the defendant’s husband, who has been situated at HMP Portland due to the fraudulent evasion of VAT. The claimant had obtained a judgment against the defendant and was looking to enforce its charging orders. A point noted by the judge was that Mr Rahman did not give evidence.

Properties In Mr Rahman’s Sole Name

A property in a person’s sole name will usually be owned beneficially by the sole owner recorded at the land registry. This is the Stack v Dowden principle.

However, it can be changed if there was an intention that someone else should be entitled to it and if there have been any matters of detriment, that there should be evidence that the other person acted to their detriment.

In Rahman, the judge went through each property considering if there had been a common intention constructive trust and detrimental reliance.

A feature of the judge’s comments was a sprinkling of matters of credibility, which did not appear to assist the defendant.

Judgment Highlights

There were a number of aspects of Mrs Rahman’s evidence that undermine its reliability. First, she professed total ignorance of the details of the creation of the various letters from members of her family listed above. She did not, she said, know how or by whom they were created. She did not explain how her mother, who does not speak English, came to sign a letter in English, other than saying that she would have spoken in Bengali, and it would have been written in English. It is, in my judgment, highly unlikely that Mrs Rahman did not know who had typed and, where applicable, translated the signatory’s words from Bengali to English, when the letters were written to support her case.

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Mrs Rahman’s evidence was that she has had a separate bank account from Mr Rahman since they were married. She also said she had worked since 2016, but that she had given all the money she earned, and any money received as gifts or birthday presents to her husband. She did not explain why, in those circumstances, she needed a bank account, and I consider it inherently improbable that she did not retain monies for herself in that account. The limited bank statements disclosed by her did not include any in respect of the relevant period; and none of them were relied upon as showing monies being paid by Mrs Rahman to Mr Rahman. I do not therefore accept Mrs Rahman’s evidence that all the money she earned or received was paid to Mr Rahman.

Mrs Rahman’s evidence was also internally inconsistent. Thus in her witness statement dated 15 December 2023 in the main claim, in opposition to the claimant’s charging order application, she said that neither she nor Mr Rahman received any rent or income from the occupation of 18 Rochford Road by Mr Rahman’s brother and his family; and that the sale of that property would render them homeless. However, in her 1st witness statement in this claim, her evidence was that Mr Rahman’s family pay rent for occupying 18 Rochford Road, which Mr Rahman uses to pay the mortgage on that property. When cross-examined about this inconsistency, she was evasive and suggested that in her earlier witness statement, she had intended to say that she (as opposed to her husband) was not receiving any rent. That is unsustainable. Similarly, she said, unconvincingly, that her reference to that family being homeless was a reference to them being “out of that house”. Again, that is unsustainable.

Finally, Mrs Rahman, in her second witness statement, referred to and relied upon a tenancy agreement in respect of 18 Rochford Road by Mr Rahman to Syeda Fathima Begum Sheby (Syeda Begum, Mr Rahman’s brother’s wife). This is signed and purports to be dated 3 August 2015, but it refers in the body of the agreement to the Tenant Fees Act 2019. The claimant’s counsel submitted that it was a sham, but in my judgment, that puts it too high. It cannot, however, have been signed on the date it purports to have been signed; and the fact that Mrs Rahman put it forward as a wholly authentic document, in my judgment, reflects adversely on her credibility.

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Mrs Rahman’s written evidence was that before the marriage, she and Mr Rahman agreed that “everything we owned was owned equally on a 50/50 basis”. In addition, she said that it was agreed between the couple’s parents that the dowry for her marriage to be paid by Mr Rahman to her was his property to be shared on a 50/50 basis.

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The claimant did not challenge that it is customary for a dowry to form part of an Islamic marriage contract, and therefore that Mr Rahman would have provided a dowry when marrying Mrs Rahman. However, there is no evidence, other than Mrs Rahman’s oral evidence, as to Mr Rahman’s financial position at the time, or what he provided as a dowry. Given the inconsistency on this issue of her oral evidence with her written evidence, the overall unreliability of her evidence and the absence of any corroborating support (with either documents or other oral evidence), Mrs Rahman has not satisfied me that on the balance of probabilities the dowry Mr Rahman agreed to provide was a half share in 18 Rochford Road.

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Mrs Rahman’s counsel submitted that the dowry was part and parcel of the marriage i.e. it was the price paid for Mrs Rahman’s hand in marriage. She submitted that without the dowry, Mrs Rahman would not have married Mr Rahman, Mrs Rahman’s detriment consisted, she said, of forgoing the opportunity to marry elsewhere. This submission was not supported by Mrs Rahman’s evidence which was simply that, before the marriage, a dowry was agreed. There was no evidence as whether and on what basis she could have married another man or men. Furthermore, I was not referred to any authorities in which marrying of itself has been held to be a detriment because it meant forgoing an opportunity to marry someone else. I therefore reject the submission that marrying Mr Rahman constituted detriment.

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I found Mrs Rahman’s account of her conversations with her husband at this time implausible. For example, she said he said to her when she moved into 18 Rochford Road, “You own this house, so why should you work?” It is self evident that owning or having an interest in a house does not remove the need to work, as indeed Mr Rahman did. I am not satisfied that Mrs Rahman stopped working because she believed she had an interest in 18 Rochford Road. I find that she stopped working because she moved away from where her employment was, and because she wanted to try for a family, and because once the children were born she wanted to take care of them. These things were not, I find, done by her because she believed she had an interest in 18 Rochford Road.

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Mrs Rahman’s written evidence was that the house was in a terrible state when Mr Rahman bought it (1990) and when she moved in (1994): it was damp and had a mouse infestation. She said she carried out plastering, painting, flooring and other jobs to avoid paying builders.

It is unlikely in my judgment that a house in which Mr Rahman’s parents and his younger siblings had lived for 4 years would be in a “terrible state”. In any event, again, there is nothing to support Mrs Rahman’s testimony: no photographs, paperwork of any type, or evidence from other witnesses. The description of the work done is in the most general terms. I am not satisfied that Mrs Rahman carried out work of the type she describes, or that any work she carried out went beyond the sort of work that members of a family do in a house, and which does not constitute detriment: see Midland Bank v Dobson [1986] 1 FLR 171 at 177.

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The other detrimental reliance relied upon by Mrs Rahman is keeping house and looking after the children; working in the restaurant in her free time, and giving the income from this to Mr Rahman to put towards household bills and other expenses; paying for utilities such as council tax, internet, telephone and television.

As to keeping house and looking after the children, this is insufficient to constitute detriment: Midland Bank v Dobson. As to financial contributions, this is unsupported by any documentary evidence. Mrs Rahman’s evidence is also internally inconsistent: on the one hand, she said she gave all her money to Mr Rahman, whilst on the other, she claims to have used her own money to pay bills. I am not therefore satisfied that Mrs Rahman made the financial contributions she claims to have made.

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As to ownership, Mrs Rahman’s evidence was that it was expressly agreed that they would own the property equally. This, she said, was announced by Mr Rahman at a large gathering of her and Mr Rahman’s family to celebrate Eid.

As to why it was put into his sole name, she said that this was for cultural reasons, and because she had a low income.

There are two main difficulties with the credibility of this evidence. First, again, it is unsupported by evidence from the persons said to have been present at the Eid celebrations, and no explanation provided as to why. Secondly, the court has no independent evidence as to the “cultural reasons” relied upon by Mrs Rahman. Even accepting that there is a Bangladeshi cultural practice that property is held in the husband’s name, it does not follow that property so held is beneficially jointly owned. As to Mrs Rahman having a low income, it is difficult to see how this could have adversely affected a mortgage application.