Say the ratio out loud before you open Reasoning — recalling it unprompted is exactly what the exam pays for.
Why it matters
Almost every domicile problem contains a person who says he means to go home one day. This case decides when that statement defeats a change of domicile and when it does not.
Facts
This course quotes the case within Kedar Pandey and does not set out its facts. The situation addressed is residence abroad coupled with an expressed intention to return to the native country.
Held
A mere intention to return to his native country on a doubtful contingency will not prevent such a residence in a foreign country from putting an end to his domicile of origin.
Reasoning
Step one — recall what the animus requires. A domicile of choice is inferred where a man voluntarily fixes his sole or chief residence in a place with the intention of continuing to reside there for an unlimited time.
Step two — an unlimited time is not the same as forever. A vague hope of eventual return does not make the residence limited in time in any sense the law can measure.
Step three — the test is the quality of the contingency. If the contingency is definite — a fixed term of service, a stated event certain to occur — the intention to remain is genuinely limited. If it is doubtful, the expressed intention is not an intention at all.
Exam use
It opens: Does an intention to return prevent the acquisition of a domicile of choice? — and the answer is: only if the contingency is definite.
Set the two cases against each other, because the examiner is testing exactly this. In Ramsay v. Liverpool Royal Infirmary the contingency — that he would have moved if the family he lived with had moved — defeated the change even after thirty-six years. Here a doubtful contingency does not defeat it. The real question in every case is whether the declared intention to return is definite or merely a horizon.
Give the best line on the point, from Doucet v. Geoghegan, approved in Kedar Pandey: a man who says he will go back to France when he has made his fortune is like a man who expects to reach the horizon and finds it at last no nearer than it was at the beginning of his journey.
Then apply the Indian test, which is an intention of permanent residence, and remember the evidential rule: an existing domicile is presumed to continue, so the party asserting the change must prove it on the civil standard.
It does not decide that a domicile of origin is lost by residence alone; it decides only that an unreliable intention to return does not preserve it.