This article aims to examine one aspect of legal doctrine, that of detrimental reliance in the context of raising constructive trusts or proprietary estoppels, in order to establish more precisely how the process of construction operates. The focus will be on a decision of the Court of Appeal, Wayling v. Jones, a case arising out of a long-term intimate relationship between two men, and this decision is used as a site in which to explore the interaction of legally sanctioned discourses of gender and sexuality.