It seems former Australian Test cricketer Craig McDermott is in a spot of bother because of his involvement with failed property investment company Bridgecorp Finance. McDermott was loaned $19.6M by Bridgecorp to aid his Gold Coast property development business. He stated that one of his assets was his $7.5M Gold Coast mansion, along with various shares, assets and jewellery, which, together with the mansion, were said to total $20M in value. Now he has told the receiver of Bridgecorp that in fact the assets are owned by his wife, and he misrepresented his ownership of them to Bridgecorp in 2005. Therefore, the beleagured Bridgecorp investors are unlikely to get the money they hoped to get from McDermott.
Of course, the lawyer in me can’t help wondering whether McDermott transferred ownership to his wife at some earlier point. Even if theIf they were originally joint tenants, whether the doctrine in Re Cummins [2006] HCA 6 might be of help to the investors. We’ll watch this space.
3 Comments
“Even if theIf they were originally joint tenants ..”
You mean tenants in common?
No, joint tenants. Cummins tried to transfer his jointly owned property to his wife once he became aware the ATO was after him.
Another ploy they used was to try to argue that even if the joint tenancy prevailed, there should be a resulting trust reflecting the wife’s greater contributions to the purchase price of the property. The High Court said in cases of married couples where there was a joint tenancy, it was presumed that they owned the property equally.
So maybe it would be possible here to argue some kind of marital trust where McDermott was presumed to own 50%.
I was a terrible law student, but to me this screams equity.