Artist loses fight to prove ex husband signed over £1.5m house to her on WhatsApp
The artist, who claimed that her ex-husband transferred his £1.5 million house to her via WhatsApp after their separation, lost the “test case” fight that the Supreme Court fought to protect this.
London painter Hsiao Mei-Lin (54) married Icelandic financier Audun Mar Gudmundsson (54) in 2009, but they had a troubled marriage and separated in 2016.
During their time together, they lived in a £1.5 million house in affluent Tufnell Park in north London; It became the center of a Supreme Court fight, and Ms. Lin desperately chose to stay at home.
Although she had been given the house in their divorce, unbeknownst to Mr Gudmundsson, it had gone bankrupt the week before, eliminating her chance of receiving her half share.
He continued to fight a major legal test case in the Supreme Court over when statements made in WhatsApp messages become legally binding.
Ms. Lin insisted that the messages her ex sent to her before his bankruptcy legally transferred sole ownership to her, and that the messages constituted a “written and signed” document because they appeared on his phone under her name and on his device.
But Mr Justice Cawson, ruling on the appeals in the case today, has now thrown out her claims and ordered her out of the house by the end of July next year.
Finding that the messages did not count as being signed because her ex-husband’s name appeared at the top of them, he said: “I consider that the header within a WhatsApp ‘chat’ identifying the sender is analogous to the email address that is added by the relevant service provider to the top of an email.
“From what I can see, this is not part of the actual message, but simply provides a mechanism that allows the sender of the email or WhatsApp message to be identified by the relevant service provider.
“So I think this should be seen as incidental to the message itself, rather than forming part of the message itself.”
But it also found that Mr Gudmundsson’s messages, whether considered “signed” or not, were not intended to immediately transfer his interest in the property.
The evidence fell “quite insufficient” to prove that she wanted to give up her share immediately and was more likely to be part of negotiations towards a final divorce settlement in the future.
London’s High Court heard the couple met around 2006 and married in 2009, settling into their new home in Tufnell Park, Southcote Road, north London.
Ms Lin, a British national born in Taiwan, studied at the Royal Academy of Art in London and had a successful painting career while her husband ran a mezzanine finance company.
But Ms Lin’s lawyer, Tom Robinson KC, said her marriage was troubled, with Mr Gudmundsson becoming “addicted to methamphetamine and cocaine” despite having two children.
The couple separated in 2016 and Ms Lin began divorce proceedings the following year.
The divorce became final in March 2020, with the judge ordering Mr Gudmundsson to transfer his 50 per cent share of the family home to Ms Lin.
But unbeknownst to him, he had gone bankrupt just a week earlier on the petition of an old friend, and it was alleged that he owed himself and others more than £2.5 million.
This meant Ms Lin was unable to take sole ownership of the house, and after a hearing in the High Court in 2024 a judge declared that Lin only had a 50 per cent share, leaving Mr Gudmundsson with the other half, leading to his bankruptcy.
He was ordered to leave the house and sell it so that his creditors could collect their money; The judge postponed the decision until 2032, when both of her children will be adults.
At a two-day appeal hearing last month, trustees Maxine Reid-Roberts and Brian Burke disputed that the WhatsApp messages validly “eliminated” Mr Gudmundsson’s involvement in the home.
One of the messages read: “I suggest that you have 100% responsibility for looking after the children, then I can hand over my share of the Southcote road to you without any problems as I do not need any accommodation in London.”
“Please let me know you’re happy with this and we can settle the financial part of the divorce this week,” Ms. Lin continued, to which Ms. Lin said, “with some monthly maintenance then it’s okay.”
Ms Lin’s lawyers argued that because Mr Gudmundsson’s name appeared in the title of the messages when they reached her phone, they should be considered “signed”.
But for the trustees, barrister Steven Fennel argued that the messages were not signed and therefore not legally binding, and if found to be so, “the consequence is that a WhatsApp message without a ‘signature’ in the text would by itself be deemed to have been signed in all cases for the purposes of all legal requirements for signature.”
“If the sender’s device is in the recipient’s contact list, the app will add the name from the contact list; this can be anything… Just because the sender account is identified does not mean that messages from that account are ‘signed’.”
He also argued that the content of the messages did not mean that Mr Gudmundsson wanted to give up his share of the house immediately.
Ruling against Ms Lin today, Mr Justice Cawson said: “WhatsApp texting is a well-established method of sending encrypted messages linked to mobile phone numbers using the WhatsApp ‘app’ that can now be downloaded to mobile phones.
“Communication between two users will create a ‘chat’ between them within the application.
“When the relevant ‘chat’ is opened on the recipient’s mobile phone, the app will show the sender’s name at the top, at least if the sender is in the recipient’s ‘contacts’. Otherwise, it may only show the sender’s mobile number.”
“In Ms Lin’s case, the appearance of Mr Gudmundsson’s name in the relevant WhatsApp chat stream on her phone is sufficient to imply Mr Gudmundsson’s signature.
“It does not matter to him whether Mr Gudmundsson put the name there himself or not, as long as the intention behind it is to confirm the fact that the relevant WhatsApps came from him.
“I think the header that identifies the sender in the WhatsApp ‘chat’ is similar to the email address that the relevant service provider adds at the top of the email using the sender’s email address.
“From what I can see, this is not part of the actual message, but simply provides a mechanism that allows the sender of the email or WhatsApp message to be identified by the relevant service provider.
“So I think this should be seen as incidental to the message itself, rather than forming part of it.
“Mr Gudmundsson, as far as I can see, did not cause the thread to appear by sending the relevant messages. Instead, the thread was already available on WhatsApp as it appeared on Ms Lin’s phone before the relevant messages were added to the chat.
“In these circumstances I find it difficult to see that the necessary authentication purpose can be found in relation to the header and WhatsApp messages on the basis that the header is incidental to the messages rather than being an integral part of the messages.”
In addition to finding that the messages did not meet the “signed” requirement in the law, the judge also found that the content of the messages did not mean that Mr Gudmundsson would immediately give up his share.
“I have come to the unequivocal view that Mr Gudmundsson did not at any point manifest an intention to give up his interest in the Property definitively and immediately in favor of Ms Lin,” he said.
“The language of the WhatsApp messages, in my view, points to an agreement on Mr Gudmundsson’s part to give up his interest in the property as part of a general divorce settlement, rather than indicating an intention to immediately divest himself of that property.”
“I therefore conclude that the evidence is insufficient to support a finding that Mr Gudmundsson intends to immediately relinquish his interest in the property.”
Accepting the trustees’ part of the objection, the judge shortened the time that Ms. Lin had to leave the house and told her to leave the house until July 31, 2027, whereas she had previously been given until 2032.
