The breakup of a long-term relationship is often accompanied by a great deal of pain. It can also have a profound impact on one’s finances, as Holly Tiffany Hilborn and Cory Michael Wright have discovered after years of litigation.

At the centre of their legal dispute was a house with two rental suites in Kitsilano near the intersection of Bayswater Street and West 5th Avenue. They bought the residence for $784,030 in January 2005. Their timing was good—in subsequent years, the value of homes on Vancouver’s West Side shot up astronomically. When their relationship ended in October 2009 and Wright moved out, a battle ensued over how this real-estate asset should be divided.

On March 10, a three-member B.C. Court of Appeal panel issued a ruling that offers clarity for other couples in similar situations. Writing for the trio, Justice David Tysoe overturned a 2013 B.C. Supreme Court ruling that had awarded Wright one-half of the net equity as of the time he moved out in 2009.

“Having determined there was no unjust enrichment based on the parties’ contributions towards the property, it was not open to the judge to effectively reapportion the property and deprive Mr. Wright of the increase in value of the interest in the property he continued to own,” Tysoe wrote.

Justice Laura Gerow concluded last year that the home was worth $1.25 million in 2009 when the couple separated. She based this on a real-estate agent’s valuation, which was provided to the court by Hilborn. Wright had presented to the court an appraisal of $1.55 million as of May 17, 2012.

The B.C. Court of Appeal ruling concluded that Gerow “was mistaken in stating that Ms. Hilborn paid all the costs associated with the property after the separation”. And under Rule 13-3(2) of the B.C. Supreme Court Family Rules, “expert opinion evidence on a financial issue must be presented by means of a jointly appointed expert”, which didn’t occur in this instance.

“In my view, there was no admissible opinion evidence with respect to the value of the property,” Tysoe wrote. “In addition, neither of the valuation reports before the court purported to value the property at or near the date of the trial.”

The B.C. Court of Appeal decision noted that Hilborn later purchased Wright’s 50 percent share of the home based on the $1.25-million valuation at the time of the breakup. Because of flaws in the B.C. Supreme Court ruling, Tysoe substituted a new order: the litigants must “jointly appoint an expert to value the property as at the date on which Mr. Wright’s interest was transferred to Ms. Hilborn”.

Furthermore, Hilborn will be required to pay Wright “one-half of the difference” between the expert’s new valuation and the old $1.25-million valuation. Wright could be in line for a financial windfall: the benchmark price for a West Side detached home reached $2.15 million in February 2014, according to Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver statistics.

The court rulings make it clear that Hilborn paid the $92,095 down payment and that Wright was listed as the “primary borrower” on the mortgage. He “provided an initial reimbursement of $18,000, derived from his homebuyer’s RRSP”, according to Gerow’s 2013 ruling. That decision also noted that Hilborn “has paid almost all the monthly mortgage charges”. However, Wright had argued that their finances were “co-mingled from 2004 onwards” and he “made other capital transfers to the claimant that offset more than half of the down payment”.

In the B.C. Court of Appeal ruling, Tysoe concluded that Gerow “did not have the authority to order the sale of the property or set a valuation date or to make any orders with the respect to the [couple’s] lines of credit”. Tysoe’s decision noted that Wright’s separate legal action under the Partition of Property Act was not before Gerow, who ruled on Hilborn’s family-law claim of “unjust enrichment”.

Tysoe noted that the Family Relations Act only deals with the division of assets by married couples and not common-law partners. The Family Law Act, which addresses common-law couples’ property rights, only came into force after the B.C. Supreme Court trial, so it couldn’t be relied on by either Hilborn or Wright in their battle.