One would be forgiven for expecting to receive a multi-volume encyclopaedic text when placing an order for A Practitioner’s Guide to Joint Property. This is a huge topic, which cuts across many established categories of legal learning. A brief perusal of the contents of this work demonstrates that it aims to cover a particularly broad field of subject-matter. The feature of this text is that it attempts to do so in a single volume of less than 300 pages.

The text would be better described as a collection of essays by the various contributors, both solicitors and members of the Bar, all of whom have brought helpful experience of the different fields in which they practise to bear on the text. The topics covered include introductions to general principles of joint property interests (covering their creation, duration and termination) chapters on divorce, administration of estates on death, family provision on intestacy, partnership, chattels (including shares and bank accounts), life policies, powers of attorney, insolvency and even a chapter dedicated to joint property and money laundering.

In a relatively short text which attempts to cover such a range of topics, the coverage cannot be anything other than telegraphic. This is not a book which will provide answers to many difficult questions on co-ownership of either land or personal property. However, that would be asking the impossible. The use of the work will lie in cutting through established boundaries which separate the subject-matter in which these issues arise, and enabling the practitioner to address a number of different issues without having six books open at once. The difficulty for those marketing the book might be in persuading those who practise in the various areas it covers that this is the best first port of call rather than more established texts.

Review: Adam Rosenthal, Falcon Chambers, New Law Journal, 14 April 2006