Most people assume that transferring a share of a property involves solicitors, formal contracts and a fair amount of paperwork. A recent High Court case suggests that a WhatsApp message could carry more legal weight than most of us realise, and a 2019 case involving our own Associate Partner Daniel Wise helped establish the principle behind it.
What happened in Reid-Roberts
In Reid-Roberts & Anor v Mei-Lin & Anor [2024] EWHC 759 (Ch), a couple going through divorce proceedings exchanged WhatsApp messages and emails during their separation. In those messages, the husband suggested he would sign over his share of the family home to his wife in return for her taking on full responsibility for their children. He later changed his mind.
By the time the Family Court was ready to make a formal property order in her favour, the husband had allowed himself to be made bankrupt, something he later admitted he had done deliberately to defeat her claim. His share of the property had already passed automatically to his bankruptcy trustees, leaving his former wife unable to enforce the transfer the court had intended to make.
Her legal team argued that those messages from December 2018 had already transferred his share to her before the bankruptcy order was made. If that were true, the trustees would have had nothing to take. To answer that question, the court had to consider whether an informal digital message satisfied the legal requirements for transferring a share of a property.
This question has been answered before and a Slater Heelis case helped settle it
One of the legal principles the court turned to in Reid-Roberts was established in Neocleous v Rees [2019] EWHC 2462 (Ch), a property dispute between two neighbouring landowners. A settlement had been reached over email, but one party tried to back out on the basis that the emails had not been properly signed and therefore could not amount to a legally binding agreement under property law.
The court disagreed. The email sent on behalf of the claimants was signed off with an automatically generated Microsoft Outlook footer: the kind that appears at the bottom of most professional emails. The court found that footer to be a valid legal signature, and the settlement stood.
The solicitor whose email was at the centre of that decision was Daniel Wise, now Associate Partner in our property disputes team. His email, sent on behalf of his clients during settlement negotiations, became the basis on which the court ruled that a digital communication can satisfy the formal legal requirements of property transfers. It was a significant decision in 2019, and the Reid-Roberts case shows it is still relevant today.
So is an email legally binding when it comes to property?
It can be, and that is worth knowing if you jointly own a property with someone.
In Reid-Roberts, the court found that the WhatsApp messages did not transfer the husband’s share, but the reason was specific to the couple’s circumstances. Because they were in divorce proceedings, any agreement about property has to go through the court as a formal order. An informal message cannot bypass that process.
For people who jointly own property outside of marriage, whether with a partner, a friend or a family member, the position is different. If your written words clearly show an intention to hand over your share of a property, a court could treat that as legally done, regardless of whether any formal paperwork followed.
What this means for you
The law has kept pace with the way most of us communicate, and courts are willing to treat emails and WhatsApp messages as carrying real legal weight when it comes to property. That is not something many co-owners are aware of.
If you own a property jointly and you have ever had an informal written conversation about what would happen to it if things changed, it is worth getting proper advice on where you stand. An email or message sent in the heat of the moment, or during negotiations that never concluded, could mean something very different in a legal context.
Get In Touch
Daniel Wise is an Associate Partner in the Dispute Resolution team with over 20 years’ experience in this field. His main areas of specialism are contentious wills and probate, and trust and property disputes.
If you would like to speak with Daniel or another member of our Dispute Resolution team about the above topic, or any other related investigation, please call 0330 111 3131 or fill out our online contact form.
