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 first of the two English cases showing how hard it is to displace a domicile of origin, and it isolates the reason that matters most in practice: residence dictated by necessity is not settlement.
Facts
Winans had a Maryland domicile of origin. He was sent to England for his health and lived there until he died.
Held
There was no evidence that he had abandoned his domicile of origin. His reason for being in England was treatment, not settlement, and the Maryland domicile stood.
Reasoning
Step one — the two ingredients of a domicile of choice. It is acquired by a person of full age and capacity by residing in a country with the present intention of making it his permanent home — the factum of residence and the animus of intention. Both are required.
Step two — the residence must be freely chosen. There must be residence freely chosen and not prescribed or dictated by any external necessity, such as the duties of office, the demands of creditors, or relief from illness. Illness disposes of this case; creditors disposed of Colonel Udny's own flight to France.
Step three — the burden. An existing domicile is presumed to continue until a new one is proved. The party asserting the change failed to prove the animus.
Exam use
It opens: What must be proved to establish a domicile of choice? — with Ramsay v. Liverpool Royal Infirmary as the companion.
State the pair as one proposition. Winans: a lifetime of residence for health is not settlement. Ramsay: thirty-six years in Liverpool and death there at eighty-two, and still no domicile of choice, because he would have moved had the family he lived with moved. Residence is evidence of intention, never a substitute for it.
Add the prisoner rule, which is the same principle in its clearest form: a prisoner retains the domicile he possessed before his imprisonment, imprisonment being the paradigm of residence dictated by external necessity. And contrast the fugitive from justice, who may acquire a domicile of choice if it is clear that he intends to establish links with the new country — though not where the country is being used as a staging post against extradition, which is Puttick v. Attorney General.
Then give the Indian test. Kedar Pandey settles it at an intention of permanent residence, rejecting the heavier test of Moorhouse v. Lord.
It does not decide that illness can never coexist with an intention to settle; the finding is that on these facts the intention was not proved.