“A finding of unjust enrichment requires the establishment of three elements: enrichment, a corresponding detriment and an absence of a juristic reason for the enrichment. The remedies for unjust enrichment include monetary awards, and constructive or resulting trusts.
A resulting trust will arise when title to a property is in one party’s name, but that party, because he or she is a fiduciary, or gave no value for the property, is under an obligation to return it to the original title owner: Pecore v. Pecore, 2007 SCC 17 (CanLII), [2007] 1 S.C.R. 795, at para. 20.
In the present case, the properties were not transferred to Charbel Kajjouni by the other family members. Rather, the other family members assert that they funded the purchase of the properties, either from their own resources, or from mortgages that they negotiated and assumed responsibility for. In other words, the family members assert the existence of a purchase money resulting trust which presumes that a person who advances purchase money, but does not take title to a property, intended to assume a beneficial interest in the property in proportion to his or her contribution to the purchase price: Nishi v. Rascal Trucking Ltd., 2013 SCC 33 (CanLII), [2013] 2 S.C.R. 438, at para. 29. For the presumption of a purchase money resulting trust to apply, the persons claiming to be beneficial owners must first show that they were the ones who advanced the purchase money: Bao v. Mok, 2019 ONSC 915, at para. 69.