Say the ratio out loud before you open Reasoning — recalling it unprompted is exactly what the exam pays for.
Why it matters
It supplies the single most usable sentence in the law of domicile — the horizon image — and it is approved by the Supreme Court of India in Kedar Pandey, so it may be cited as good Indian learning and not merely as an English illustration.
Facts
A man residing in a foreign country said that he would return to France when he had made his fortune.
Held
Such a man 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. The declared intention to return did not prevent the acquisition of a domicile of choice.
Reasoning
Step one — test the contingency, not the sincerity. The court does not ask whether the man means what he says. It asks whether the event he names is one that will ever arrive.
Step two — a receding condition is no condition. Making a fortune is not an event with a date. A man who ties his return to it has, in substance, no plan to return.
Step three — therefore the animus is satisfied. The intention required is an intention to reside for an unlimited time, and an unattainable condition does not limit it.
Exam use
It opens: any problem in which the person says he intends to go home eventually — and that is most of them.
Use it as the third case in a sequence. Winans and Ramsay show how hard it is to displace a domicile of origin, and Ramsay shows a contingency defeating the change. Aikman v. Aikman holds that a doubtful contingency does not prevent the loss of the domicile of origin. This case tells you how to recognise a doubtful contingency.
Attribute it correctly. Kedar Pandey approves it, and settles the Indian test at an intention of permanent residence, rejecting the requirement of a change of national allegiance in Moorhouse v. Lord. Saying that the Indian Supreme Court has adopted the line is worth more than citing it as an English flourish.
Keep the evidential frame in view. The existing domicile is presumed to continue; the burden lies on whoever asserts the change; and the standard is the civil standard.
It does not decide that an intention to return is always irrelevant; a definite intention, tied to a real event, still prevents the change.