Private Law Theory

INTRODUCTION
An educated woman in her mid-thirties joined a religious community and made vows of poverty, obedience to the community’s leader and chastity. To fulfil her vow of poverty, she gave her assets to the leader on trust for the community’s purposes. She did not receive independent advice before doing this. The leader did not benefit personally from the gifts and used the income that they generated to fund the community’s social welfare work in the local slums. Some years later, the woman’s religious beliefs had evolved and she left the community to join another religious group within the same broad religious tradition. Later still, she sought to recover what remained of her assets from her former leader. In the 1887 case in question – Allcard v Skinner – the English Court of Appeal would have upheld her claim on the ground of equitable undue influence, except that she had delayed too long in making it …

€ (Westlaw)

Ridge, ‘Equitable undue influence and religion’ (2023) 139 Law Quarterly Review (Jul) 458-482.