Mark Jones explores the tricky issue of domicile of origin over domicile of choice in Morris v Davies
The recent decision of the High Court in the case of Morris v Davies [2011] EWHC 1773 (Ch) emphasised the tenacious nature of a person's domicile of origin and the intensely fact-based approach to considering assertions of substitution of the same by an alternative domicile of choice.
The dispute arose from the administration of the estate of the late Owen Davies, who was born in England on 1 November 1963 and who died unexpectedly of a heart attack in Paris on the 26 November 2008, aged just 45. What happened thereafter informed much of the considerable antipathy in the case and the media interest at the time of the trial, where those close to the deceased agreed to and did conceal the fact of his death and his funeral from his family, with such a degree of success that for several months after both events they remained in complete ignorance.
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Barrister at 3 Dr Johnson's Building. Temple. London
In recent years there has been a proliferation of cases in the English courts on the issue of Indian dowries particularly in areas of high Asian population. The Oxford English Dictionary broadly defines dowry as encompassing 'money or property the wife brings with her to the husband's home; the portion given with the wife; a present or gift given by a man to or for his bride'. The Chambers English Dictionary provides 'the property which a woman brings to her husband at marriage; sometimes a gift given to or for a wife at marriage'. These definitions provide that dowry has two constituents- the giving of property to the bride from parents and kin and the giving of jewellery from the in-laws.
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