Essay LAW2FPL – Foundations of Property Law and Legislation – Law Assignment Help

Assignment Task

This assignment is worth a total of 30 marks. All questions and all parts of questions must be answered.

For the purpose of answering, please disregard any legislation not covered in class which may be applicable to the facts.

If you believe that any important facts are missing from the questions, please indicate in your answer how such missing facts might be relevant to answering the questions.

Question 1

Philip Harper was the owner of the fee simple in 38 Dale Street, Coburg, Victoria. He ran an antique shop in the large building which stood on the land. Philip and his wife Malathi had two children: a daughter named Jamila and a son named Rohan. Jamila shared her father’s passion for antiques. From the time she turned 18 on 9 June 2000, she assisted her father with his business in return for a modest salary. By contrast, Rohan was an adventurous sort of person. As soon as he turned 18 on 15 February 2002, he went to India and started a Himalayan trekking business.

On 16 July 2005, Malathi passed away. Philip was grief-stricken, and unable to muster up the energy needed to travel to the antique shop every day and to keep it open from 9am-5pm. Fortunately, Jamila was able to carry on the business and did so at her father’s request. As well as making sales, she sourced stock, paid business expenses (eg her own salary, the council rates, utilities) out of business proceeds, and so on.

On 2 March 2006, Philip also passed away. In his will, he left the fee simple in 38 Dale Street to Rohan. Well before Malathi’s death, Rohan had ceased communicating with the rest of his family. At the time of Philip’s death, therefore, Jamila had no idea how to get in contact with Rohan. Moreover, being rather peeved about the terms of Philip’s will, she made no effort to track him down. Instead, she simply carried on the antique business from the premises of 38 Dale Street as she had long been doing, but with the difference that she now kept the net proceeds as her own income.

In mid-2007, Jamila embarked on extensive renovations of 38 Dale Street. For a start, she had the entire interior and exterior of the building repainted. As the building’s wooden stumps were a termite hazard, she had the building restumped with concrete. Finally, she had studded plasterboard internal walls erected to partition the building into a number of rooms. The total cost came to $38,000. Jamila had to dip into her personal savings to finance it all.

Answer the following questions, explaining your answers fully:

a) Does Jamila have to vacate 38 Dale Street?

b) Assuming that the answer to a) is ‘yes’, is she able to take the stained-glass window with her?