... activated where an owner wants to make a gift of property to the donee which is only intended to take effect if he dies. Upon death equity will compel the donor's executors or administrators to perfect the donee's imperfect title, even though he is a mere volunteer. Lord Russell CJ in Cain v Moon2 laid out the essential conditions of a valid donatio mortis causa, thus already restricting greatly the scope of this exception. The first of these was that the gift or donation must have been made in contemplation, though not necessarily in expectation of death. Smallacombe v Elder's Trustee & Executor Co Ltd3 recognised that this contemplation must be something more specific than a realisation of the general truth that we are all going to die eventually; "the donor must have been contemplating a comparatively early death from some cause or another". In Wilkes v Allington4 it was ...

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