|
Gifts - Strong v Bird. Hugginson v. Hugginson
In Hugginson v. Hugginson (Ont CA, 2025) the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal, this brought when the "application judge ordered the appellant to return the $400,000 to her stepfather’s estate and granted costs of $16,000 to the respondent", ostensibly as a failed 'gift'.
Here the court considers the rule from Strong v Bird, regarding gifts and later executorship:[3] The parties agree that the application judge applied the correct, well-established test for proving inter vivos gifts, set out in McNamee v. McNamee, 2011 ONCA 533, 106 O.R. (3d) 401, at para. 23. To prove the $400,000 was an inter vivos gift from her stepfather, the appellant had to prove all three elements of the test: 1) her stepfather had the specific intention to make her a gift; 2) the gift was delivered to the appellant during the stepfather’s lifetime; and 3) the appellant accepted the gift. There was no dispute that the onus was on the appellant to prove these three elements: Carvalho v. Verma, 2024 ONSC 1183, 92 E.T.R. (4th) 182, at para. 50. There was no issue that the appellant’s transfer of the $400,000 to herself satisfied the third element.
[4] The application judge determined that the appellant had not satisfied the first two elements of the test. She had “not satisfied the onus on her to provide clear, convincing and cogent evidence” that her stepfather had a clear, continuing intention up to the time of his death to make the $400,000 gift to her or that delivery of the gift was complete during his lifetime. The application judge ordered the appellant to return the $400,000 to her stepfather’s estate and granted costs of $16,000 to the respondent.
....
2. Strong v. Bird is inapplicable
[23] The appellant argues that the application judge misapplied Strong v. Bird.
[24] The application judge correctly stated the rule derived from Strong v. Bird as follows:In Strong v. Bird (1874), L.R. 18 Eq. 315, Sir George Jessel held that a testator, having manifested an intention in his lifetime to forgive a debt, which continued unchanged down to his death, and having appointed the debtor his executor, the debt having been by this act extinguished at law, equity would regard the gift as complete. This rule had been expanded incrementally to apply to a gift of specific chattel, if it was proved to be the intention to give that specific chattel continuing down to the testator’s death: Morton v. Brighouse, 1927 CanLII 37 (SCC), [1927] S.C.R. 118, at para. 3. [25] Based on his findings concerning the stepfather’s lack of intention to make a specific gift to the appellant, the application judge concluded that Strong v. Bird was inapplicable. He explained his conclusion at para. 39 of his reasons:As [the appellant] cannot prove [the stepfather’s] specific intention to gift her a specific piece of [his] property or even that there was any intention continuing up to death, I find that the rule in Strong v. Bird has no application to the facts of this case. It does not apply to perfect and complete the gift. [26] There is no basis to interfere with the application judge’s conclusion. The appellant’s argument fails because of the application judge’s unassailable findings concerning the absence of the requisite, continuing intention on the stepfather’s part to make the specific gift of $400,000 to the appellant.
|
