How do you prove that you are married when a valid marriage certificate is not available? This question may not often arise, but it does sometimes happen that a marriage certificate cannot be produced, which can be particularly problematic when someone is...
When an adjudicator in a construction dispute gives a ruling, the decision can only be appealed on a limited number of grounds. One of these is ‘breach of natural justice’, which means that the adjudicator’s decision is so obviously flawed...
So-called ‘discounted gift schemes’ have been used in Inheritance Tax (IHT) planning for many years. The basic idea behind them is that a gift is made by a person whose estate is likely to be subject to IHT and the gift is so structured (usually...
Although roads and pavements cannot be guaranteed to be kept safe to use at all times (for example, during exceptionally cold weather, when ice can form quickly), the authority responsible for any public space must take reasonable care to ensure that it is...
According to a recent ‘Which?’ report, landlords are lazy when it comes to making sure that costs such as insurance premiums and the like, that are passed on to their tenants, represent good value for money. In some cases, it is thought that the...
A consultation on ways of making it easier for social housing providers to evict problem tenants has recently closed. It is proposed that landlords be given the right, in appropriate circumstances, to evict tenants who have been proven to have acted in an...
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have tasked a new team of 200 investigators and specialists, the ‘Affluent Team’, with identifying wealthy tax avoiders. One of the first targets of the team is wealthy individuals who own land and property abroad....
When a woman updated her will in 2003, she had no way of knowing that a simple change to a precedent document could cause problems for her executors several years later. There was no intention to change one of the main provisions of the will, which was that...
Although pre-nuptial agreements are persuasive rather than binding in the British courts, a recent ruling of the High Court on a French ‘pre-nup’ illustrates clearly the current approach of the courts. It involved a very wealthy French couple...
When a property is owned by two people as joint tenants (where the title to the property is owned by each of them, so that if one dies, the other inherits the property by survivorship), each of them is considered to be the legal owner of the property. A man...
A North Somerset man has received a six-figure sum in compensation after a mistake during an operation on his heart led to him having to have a pacemaker fitted. Steve Edwards, 51, an NHS manager from Weston-super-Mare, was undergoing treatment for an...
The wave of litigation which has followed the turmoil in the financial markets as a result of the credit crunch has led to many decisions that have resulted in those suing financial institutions being left to lick their wounds (and also facing sizeable legal...
A court ruling that a spouse’s lottery winnings were not ‘matrimonial property’ so were not subject to the usual rule of equal division between the spouses when the marriage broke up received much publicity recently. The normal rule on...
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has now published its response to the recent consultation on proposals to criminalise squatting. The consultation paper, entitled ‘Options for dealing with squatting’ , received over 2,000 responses. As a first...
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have announced that the Mortgage Verification Scheme (MVS), which was developed in co-operation with the Council of Mortgage Lenders and the Building Societies Association and run as a pilot scheme in March 2010, is now fully...
When a Jersey multi-millionaire gave most of his assets away to one of his daughters in the months prior to his death, leaving an estate of less than £100,000 to be shared by all three of his children, it was perhaps inevitable that a legal challenge...
The scheme set up by the Government to assess the value of Northern Rock shares, for the purposes of deciding whether or not compensation was due to shareholders, concluded that without government support the shares would be valueless. A group of...
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have had difficulties in the past in checking on property sales to ensure that the ‘principal private residence’ exemption for Capital Gains Tax (CGT) is being used correctly. Notwithstanding the complexity of the...
When a marriage or civil partnership breaks up and there is a significant risk that one party may move assets (normally cash in bank accounts) ‘out of sight’, it is sometimes possible to obtain a ‘freezing order’ to prevent the sums...
A recent case illustrates how strong the evidence must be before the presumption that a person making a will has the mental capacity to do so will be overturned. It involved an elderly woman who died leaving an estate of a little under £150,000. Her...
When a house is bought or sold, the prospective purchaser makes what are called ‘pre-contract enquiries’ in order to establish the exact details of the property being bought. These are normally in the form of a standard set of questions with any...
It is common for service charges to be paid ‘on account’ of the annual cost, based on estimates, and a final account to be made up some time after the year end, based on the actual costs incurred. However, not all landlords are diligent about...
Most people probably do not realise that a highway authority’s responsibility for keeping the roads safe to use is very limited. In practical terms, so many things can happen to a road that it would be unreasonable for the authority to be responsible...
One of the rules that applies to the administration of estates is that whilst a person appointed as executor under a will can refuse to accept the appointment, once an executor ‘intermeddles’ in the estate, in principle he or she cannot then...
The cardinal rule in proceedings involving children is that the welfare of the child comes first. In some cases, the interests of individual children in a family are sufficiently different for them to be considered separately. In a case involving a...
When an elderly woman passed away, her daughter, who was her personal representative, realised that some of her late mother’s land was occupied unlawfully by three people. She brought an action against them , seeking to recover possession of the land...
In order for an asset to be removed from an estate for Inheritance Tax (IHT) purposes, the donor of the asset must retain no benefit from it after the legal title to it passes. Complex ‘reservation of benefit’ legislation exists to ensure that...
The UK has been proceeding apace in its attempts to develop ‘green’ energy, and wind turbines are appearing all over the country – including in such seemingly unlikely spots as beside the M25. However, no matter what their benefits as...
A husband has lost his appeal against an order made in July 2010 for ancillary relief (the legal term for financial provision for an ex-spouse) that put family assets of £10 million, including £7 million held in two trusts, into the pool of...
When a millionaire estate agent died intestate, the two women he had been involved with both tried to have his estate distributed according to their wishes. Chris John died leaving an estate worth £5 million. At the time of his death, he had been...
When does a commercial property become vacant under a lease agreement? This was the question considered in a recent hearing in the Court of Appeal . The appeal was brought by haulage and storage firm NYK Logistics (UK) Ltd., a former tenant of Netherlands...
It is well known that in the UK, the loser in a court case pays the legal costs of the winner. It is often assumed that if, say, your legal costs are £5,000 and you win your case, you will get the £5,000 reimbursed. However, this is normally not...
People who suffered losses as a result of the collapse of mutual insurer Equitable Life in 2000 will be pleased to know that the compensation payments they receive as a result of the passing of the Equitable Life (Payments) Act 2010 will be tax free. The...
The recent case in which the court was asked to rule regarding a vacant flat that was part of a property sold at auction – the existence of which neither the vendor nor the purchaser was aware of until after the sale – has now been heard by the...
A widow who was excluded from inheriting her husband’s £500,000 estate, under the terms of a will he made four years before he died in 2009, has contested the will, alleging that the brain tumour from which her husband was suffering meant that he...
A father who sought to have a hearing regarding his contact with his children adjourned so that new evidence could be obtained found his argument rejected by the Court of Appeal recently. The family court had issued an interim order that the father, who had...
A landowner’s duty of care with regard to land used by members of the public was the subject of a recent case in the High Court . The limits of legal responsibility in such circumstances are established generally by the law of tort (civil injury to...
New measures put forward by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to deal with the problem of ‘tax agents who act dishonestly in tax matters’ include proposals that HMRC should ‘name and shame’ advisers who are found to have acted dishonestly...
A developer who completely demolished a property when he only had permission to demolish part of it has landed himself with a fine and legal costs totalling more than £120,000. The developer has been given a year to pay the £80,000 fine and the...
Years ago, it was common for a deed creating a trust for children to specify the beneficiaries as being ‘the legitimate children’ of the person setting up the trust. Recently, the children of the 13th Duke of Manchester, by his bigamous marriage...
A woman who paid more than 90 per cent of the cost of a £3 million property purchased for her daughter, in whose name the title is held, has failed in her attempt to have the ownership of the property changed to reflect her contribution. It would seem...
The High Court has upheld a challenge by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to various terms found in some gym membership contracts – most notably lengthy minimum membership periods – ruling that such terms are unfair and therefore unenforceable....
The Supreme Court recently handed down its judgment in the case of Gaines-Cooper v Revenue and Customs . In what will be a suprising decision to many, the Court has ruled in favour of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), who argued that businessman Robert...
On 1 October 2011, changes to the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 (normally called the Construction Act) came into force. The changes are contained in Part 8 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 ...
The combination of a deathbed marriage, a millionaire and a new will was always likely to end in a court battle, and so it proved recently when a family challenged their late father’s will, which left everything to his new wife, who had been his...
The Law Society is urging the nearly 70 per cent of the adult population who have not yet made a will to do so. There are many reasons why you should make a will. It is a mistake to think that it is only necessary if you have a substantial estate. Estate...
Noisy neighbours can be the bane of one’s existence, so it is no real surprise that a lesbian couple finally lost patience with their adjoining next-door neighbours after they had workmen carrying out extensive building work on their property for a...
Just four months after relaunching Index-linked Savings Certificates, the Government-backed savings institution National Savings & Investments (NS&I) has withdrawn its Savings Certificates from sale. The move was necessary in order to ensure that it...
As part of the Government’s bid to tackle the growth of a ‘compensation culture’, the Ministry of Justice has announced that the payment of referral fees in personal injury cases is to be banned. At present, referral fees are commonly paid...
Among the requirements for a will to be valid are that it must not be witnessed by a beneficiary and it must be signed at the bottom by the testator (the person making it) or, if they are unable to sign it, under their direction. You would therefore be...
A recent divorce case has confirmed the general position that when wealth is inherited, it is not normally subject to the ‘equal shares’ rule that applies to assets built up during a marriage. The case involved a couple who married in the UK...
