When a parent puts property “in trust” for young children, the words on title may not settle who owns it. In 1996, a mother bought land next to her farm and had title registered in her name “in trust” for her two daughters, then aged 12 and 10. For the next two decades, she paid for the land, farmed it and kept its income. The trust wording did not become an issue until 2017, when she decided to sever a piece of the land for her younger daughter and was told that her own signature was not required because her daughters were the beneficial owners.
The transfer went ahead. In Laberge Gareau v. Laberge Gareau, 2026 ONSC 4669, the mother then sought a declaration that she owned the land that remained. Her younger daughter supported the claim. Her older daughter, who had worked on the farm for years, opposed it and sought either an interest in the land or compensation for her contributions. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice had to decide who owned the land, whether the mother’s promises gave the older daughter a right to it, and whether the older daughter was entitled to be paid.
Who Owned the Land?
The Court first rejected the older daughter’s argument that the claim was out of time. It found that, because the mother had remained in possession of the land and continued to receive its profits, the ten-year limitation period under the Real Property Limitations Act had not started to run, and that in any event the claim was not discoverable until 2017.
That left the central question of what the mother had intended in 1996. Because her daughters were minors, the law presumed a gift, and it was for her to show otherwise. The evidence on that point came largely from the mother herself. She testified that she had always meant to keep the land, and her lawyer’s reporting letter supported her account. Although the letter confirmed that she had taken title in trust, it also described her as the “beneficial owner,” flagged the risk of the new land merging with her adjoining property and referred to a trust agreement that she never came back to sign. Her payment of the mortgage and her continued use of the land and its income pointed the same way.
The older daughter relied on her mother’s statements that “this will all be yours someday,” but the Court read them as describing a possible future inheritance rather than a gift already made. The mother had said the same thing about the farm property held in her own name. The Court found that the presumption had been rebutted and that the mother remained the sole beneficial owner of the remaining land.
Did the Promises Create a Right to the Land?
Those same statements were the foundation of the older daughter’s proprietary estoppel claim, and they fared no better. The Court could not determine with sufficient certainty what property had been promised or when she would receive it. Even the assurance she said she received when asked to sign the 2017 transfer amounted, in the Court’s view, to a promise of the farm at some unspecified time, possibly as an inheritance.
The Court was also not satisfied that she had reasonably relied on the promises. She had tried to formalize the arrangement with her mother because she did not feel secure in it, and had declined to invest in a hay shed for fear of losing her money. Nor did she give up any property of her own by signing the 2017 transfer, since the Court had found that the land belonged beneficially to her mother.
Was She Entitled to Be Paid?
Her claim for compensation succeeded, although the Court was careful about its limits. It cautioned that help from an adult child will not always support a claim, and that the bar should be high in a parent-child relationship. The younger daughter’s help around the farm, for example, was treated as a voluntary gift.
The older daughter’s contributions went further. The Court accepted that she had worked an average of 30 hours a week on the farm for 15 years and had contributed to a tractor and other equipment. It found no evidence that she intended these contributions as gifts, and no binding agreement governing them. Because she had worked across both farm properties, however, the evidence did not tie her contributions to the remaining land specifically, and the remedy was money rather than a share of the land. The Court valued her compensable contributions at $264,481.16, deducted $93,600 for thirteen years of free room and board, and awarded her $170,881.16 plus prejudgment interest.
For counsel, the lesson is not to treat a dispute over family land as a single question of ownership. The older daughter did not obtain an interest in the land, but she was still entitled to be paid. The mother kept the land because she had never given it away, but she could not keep the full benefit of her daughter’s contributions without paying for them.
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