Steven Fennell succeeds in High Court appeal overturning WhatsApp property ruling
January 15, 2026
Steven Fennell from Exchange Chambers, instructed by DLA Piper LLP, successfully acted for the Trustees in Bankruptcy in the High Court appeal in Reid-Roberts v Lin [2026] EWHC 49 (Ch), which overturned a first-instance decision on whether WhatsApp messages can effect a transfer of an interest in land.
In a 2024 first instance decision [2024] EWHC 759 (Ch), the Insolvency and Companies Court decided that a WhatsApp message is “in writing and signed” for the purpose of transferring interests in real property, leaving the door open to huge uncertainty and the risk of people who use instant messaging apps inadvertently committing themselves to property transfers, guarantees and the like. The High Court has now reversed that ruling and decided that WhatsApp messages are not “signed” unless the sender of the message incorporates a signature in the body of the message.
In this case, a divorcing husband and wife exchanged WhatsApp messages and emails to try to agree the terms of an order in family financial relief proceedings. The husband was made bankrupt before the Family Court could make its order, such that his 50% equity in the house vested in his trustees in bankruptcy. When the trustees applied for an order for possession and sale, the wife argued that the husband had actually transferred his equity to her when they were discussing what was to happen to the house and the children.
The court had to decide whether the WhatsApp messages were “signed” for the purpose of s.53(1)(c) of the Law of Property Act 1925. The Judge at first instance found they did, regarding the husband’s name in the automated header as sufficient signature, evincing an intent to authenticate the message.
Mr Justice Cawson disagreed and found that the WhatsApp messages were not “signed”. “Signature” involves including a name in a document with “authenticating intent”. Earlier caselaw had held that an email is not “signed” by reason of the sender’s email address appearing in the recipient’s inbox, but will be “signed” if there is a conventional electronic signature in the message itself, either added on a one-off basis by the sender or, more usually, added automatically by the email software (see J Periera Fernandes SA v Mehta [2006] 1 WLR 1543 and Neocleous v Rees [2019] EWHC 2462). Applying that caselaw by analogy, Mr Justice Cawson held that the WhatsApp messages were unsigned.
Commenting on the High Court judgment, Steven Fennell said:
“That outcome is probably unsurprising to most property practitioners, but it is a welcome clarification of the position.
“There were two other significant points in the decision. The first concerned the WhatsApp messages and emails themselves, with the judge having regard to the context of negotiations between divorcing spouses to find that there was no objective intent on the part of the husband to give up his interest in the property in advance of a consent order which would deal with all matters in dispute. That too is unlikely to be surprising to family practitioners, but the clarification is welcome. The position can be very different in the case of cohabitees, where relatively informal email exchanges have been held to amount to a signed transfer of an interest in real property (Hudson v Hathaway [2023] KB 345).
“Finally, the decision upholds the point of principle derived from Grant v Baker [2016] EWHC 1782 dealing with section 335 of the Insolvency Act 1986 that even if exceptional circumstances are established, the court should order possession and sale of jointly-owned property to take place reasonably quickly. The judge at first instance had deferred the sale of the property to 2032; Mr Justice Cawson upheld the Trustees’ appeal and changed the date to 2027. There are surprisingly few authorities dealing with the principles on which the court should exercise its discretion when exceptional circumstances are found and this will be a useful decision for trustees in future cases.”
