The doctrine of Donatio mortis causa (DMC), otherwise known as deathbed gifts, has developed to allow a donor to make a gift of property to someone outside of their will, and the formalities contained in the Wills Act 1837 s 9, which is conditional upon death. For a deathbed gift to take effect, King v Dubrey [2015] EWCA Civ 581; [2016] Ch 221 confirmed that three conditions must be met: the donor must (1) make the gift in contemplation of their death; (2) the donor must deliver dominion over the subject matter of the gift to the recipient, with dominion meaning either the physical possession of the subject matter, some means of accessing the subject matter or the documents evidencing the entitlement to possession of the subject matter (see Sen v Headley [1991] Ch 425; [1991] 2 All ER 636), and (3) the gift must be conditional upon the death of the donor …
€ (Westlaw)
David Sheldon, ‘A deathbed gift of registered land: a comment on Rahman v Hassan’ (2025) 141 Law Quarterly Review 351-356.
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