Is an agreement to share expenses or to contribute to the purchase or purchase of property enforceable as contract?

Nova Scotia, Canada


The following excerpt is from Coward v. Bowden, 2017 NSSM 101 (CanLII):

Specific agreements to share expenses or to contribute to the purchase or property are enforceable as contract. On the other hand, gifts of property that are made with no expectation of return or repayment cannot be turned into agreements to repay by subsequent regret in the event that the relationship falls apart: see, for e.g., Cook v. Orr, supra, at paras 8 and 14. The difficulty lies in distinguishing between the two. That task is not an easy one, especially given that contributions to the common good (what are, in effect, gifts) are “precisely the kind of thing people do for each other when they are in a caring relationship:” Cook v. Orr, per Adjudicator Slone at para.14.

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