Director Liable to Charity for Company's Failings
A company director whose company provided services to a charity of which he was a trustee found himself faced with a claim from the charity that he was liable to it when the company failed to fulfil...
View ArticleChildren's Interests Need to be Assessed Individually
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...
View ArticleChild Maintenance - What's New
Changes in the system for dealing with child maintenance claims will soon be fully implemented, with cases currently dealt with by the Child Support Agency being transferred to the Child Maintenance...
View ArticleFinancial Settlement in Civil Partnership Split
The Court of Appeal has recently heard the first substantial appeal concerning a claim for ancillary financial relief (a financial settlement on the break-up of a marriage or civil partnership)...
View ArticleJudicial Support Given for Cohabitation Law in England and Wales
In 2011, there were nearly three million unmarried cohabiting couples, with or without children, in the United Kingdom. Many of these may not be aware that if their relationship were to end, their...
View ArticlePast Behaviour Indicates Intent
A recent case illustrates the importance for cohabiting couples of giving careful consideration to property ownership and inheritance issues. Ms Cattle had a relationship with her partner, Mr Evans,...
View ArticleEnglish Law Decides Settlement
When a 43-year-old Spanish-born man and his wife divorced 15 years after their marriage in Spain, having lived in England since 2004 and raised two children (now 12 and 10) here, the question for the...
View ArticleUnexpected Debt Causes Shock for Executor
When an executor becomes responsible for administering the estate of a person who has died, he or she is required to gather in the assets of the deceased and to discharge from them any amounts owed by...
View ArticleIntention to Remain Seals Tax Residence Status
When a non-resident of the UK visited the UK with a view to becoming resident here, little did he realise that the decision would cost him nearly £100,000 in tax. The man was a resident of Japan from...
View ArticleWhen a Gift Cannot Be Made, What Happens
When a charitable gift in a will fails (other than because the estate lacks the assets necessary to make the bequest), the resulting effect on the distribution of the estate depends on the...
View ArticleIHT Changes For 'Non-Doms'
With one in six British marriages now involving a spouse not domiciled in the UK, problems involving the tax consequences of domicile are becoming increasingly common. Most of the press coverage...
View ArticleDeathbed Marriage Creates Tax Advantage
Marrying or forming a civil partnership in order to save tax may not be romantic, but a recent case showed the benefits of so doing when a man married his lifetime partner shortly before he died,...
View ArticleEstate Agent Abused Power of Attorney
The dangers of giving a power of attorney to the wrong person have yet again come into focus following the conviction of a Birmingham estate agent who had stolen more than £250,000 from an elderly...
View ArticleHow to Protect Your Life Savings
The newspapers recently reported the sad case of Geoffrey Hough, an elderly man from Salford, Manchester, whose life savings of £56,000 had been fraudulently spent by his son-in-law. Mr Hough suffered...
View ArticleC'est Bon, Le Pre-Nup
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....
View ArticleWill Invalid After Court Rules Witness Unlikely to Forget
For a will to be valid, one of the conditions imposed by the Wills Act 1837 is that two witnesses must attest the will by signing and acknowledging the signature of the person making it (the...
View ArticleUpset Not Sufficient Reason to Deny Contact
When a mother recently sought to stop her estranged ex-partner (who had been granted parental responsibility over their children) from seeing their two daughters because she found it ‘too upsetting’,...
View ArticleCourt Provides Resolution to Potential Problem
Facing the possibility of a development on neighbouring land that will reduce your light is never welcome and the threat of such a development is not something you might care to have hanging over you....
View ArticleUnfair Post-Nuptial Agreement Set Aside by Court
A Russian ‘serial non-discloser’ of assets said to be worth millions of pounds had his attempt to bind his ex-wife to the terms of their post-nuptial agreement dashed recently in the family court. The...
View ArticleCourt Reversal for Vendor Who Didn't Know What He Had Sold
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...
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