Say the ratio out loud before you open Reasoning — recalling it unprompted is exactly what the exam pays for.
Why it matters
It is the most striking illustration in the paper of the proposition that residence is not intention. Thirty-six years of residence, and a death in the country of residence, still did not make a domicile of choice.
Facts
George Bowie had a Scottish domicile of origin. He lived in Liverpool for thirty-six years and died there at the age of eighty-two.
Held
He acquired no domicile of choice in England: he would have moved from England if those members of his family with whom he was living had decided to move.
Reasoning
Step one — the factum was overwhelming and the animus was absent. Nobody could dispute the residence. What was missing was the intention to make England his permanent home.
Step two — a contingent intention is not the animus manendi. An intention that depends on somebody else's decisions is not a settled purpose to remain. His staying was conditional on his family staying.
Step three — the evidential rule does the rest. An existing domicile is presumed to continue until a new one is proved, and the presumption was not displaced.
Exam use
It opens: Is long residence enough to establish a domicile of choice? — answer no, and this is the case that proves it.
Pair it with Winans for the other kind of failure: residence for health is not settlement, because the residence must be freely chosen and not dictated by external necessity such as the duties of office, the demands of creditors or relief from illness.
Then set the contingency question up properly, because this is where the cases pull against each other. Lord Campbell in Aikman v. Aikman says that a mere intention to return on a doubtful contingency will not prevent residence abroad from ending the domicile of origin; here the contingency defeated the change. The real question in every case is therefore whether the declared intention to return is definite or is merely a horizon — and the best line on it is Doucet v. Geoghegan, approved in Kedar Pandey: a man who says he will return when he has made his fortune is like a man who expects to reach the horizon and finds it at last no nearer than at the beginning of his journey.
Close with the Indian position. Kedar Pandey holds that the only intention required for proof of a change of domicile is an intention of permanent residence, which is a lighter test than the change of national allegiance demanded by Moorhouse v. Lord.
It does not decide that a person living with relatives can never acquire a domicile of choice; the finding is one of fact about this man's intention.