Under Paragraph 5(a) of Schedule 4 to the Land Registration Act 2002, the Land Register may be altered for the purpose of correcting a mistake. Recently, the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) granted an application for alteration of the Register by a woman who claimed that she had never signed a form transferring a property she had brought jointly with her brother into his sole name.

The woman claimed that she and her brother had bought the property in 2002 for £99,500. The property had been registered in their joint names and the Form TP1 executing the transfer stated that they held the title as joint tenants. Her brother had paid the mortgage and the maintenance costs as he had been living in the property. In 2023, wishing to realise her interest in the property, she had checked the title at the Land Registry and found her name absent. She claimed that she had been abroad when the Form TR1 transferring title to her brother was purportedly signed in December 2003, providing her passport showing the dates on which she left and returned to the UK. She relied on evidence from a forensic graphologist that there was very strong evidence for the proposition that the signature on the Form TR1 was not hers.

Her brother claimed that he had decided to buy a home for him and his siblings, with the intention that it would eventually become his own future family’s home. He had needed his sister to apply with him in order to obtain a mortgage and, after his credit improved, she had transferred the property into his sole name at his request. He stated that he had used a mortgage broker for the transfer, including witnessing the signatures, but did not call the broker to give evidence. Nor did he obtain expert handwriting evidence of his own, despite having been given permission by the FTT to do so. He said that he could not remember whether they had signed the Form TR1 separately or together.

The FTT considered the forensic graphologist’s evidence to be a properly reasoned and respectable expert opinion with no obvious defect. The woman had provided the graphologist with a considerable number of sample signatures, including those on her 2001 counterpart driving licence and her 1996 and 2006 passports. In such circumstances, there was no basis for the FTT to reject it.

The FTT accepted the woman’s evidence on what was agreed and whether the Form TR1 was signed, finding it be consistent and credible. Her brother had been surprisingly vague on the signing of the Form TR1 and, although the burden of proof was on his sister, he had provided virtually no documentary evidence in support of his case. She, on the other hand, had supplied a bank statement showing payment of 10 per cent of the purchase price, plus a payment of £250 to the developer.

The FTT found that the woman had not signed the Form TR1 and there was therefore a mistake in the Register caused by her brother’s fraud. The Chief Land Registrar was directed to give effect to her application.