Mr Honick was thinking of marriage, but Mrs Rawnsley intended to live alone in the upstairs flat, as they found out after.
The house was sold and his administratrix, Mrs Burgess, wanted to establish severance to get half the sale proceeds which would be more than £750.
Even if there was not any firm agreement but only a course of dealing, it clearly evinced an intention by both parties that the property should henceforth be held in common and not jointly.
[3] The significance of an agreement is not that it binds the parties; but that it serves as an indication of a common intention to sever... ... the negotiations between Mr Honick and Mrs Rawnsley, if they can be properly described as negotiations at all, fall, it seems to me, far short of warranting an inference.
One could not ascribe to joint tenants an intention to sever merely because one offers to buy out the other for £X and the other makes a counter-offer of £Y.As the three judges found there was severance, at £750, this was the amount declared to be payable in law to the executrix of Rawnsley, less than the half of the sale proceeds she sought.