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The amount of money left to charities in the wills of deceased people reached an all-time high in 2014, totalling more than £2.2 billion. An analysis of accounts filed at the Charity Commission shows that 35,000 people in England, Scotland and Wales...

Managing residential property is a legally complex task and is not for amateurs. In one case which proved the point , benevolent landlords found themselves having to take court action after dispensing with formalities in order to save their tenants money. ...

The Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) are popular vehicles for investment in small or start-up businesses. Both are attractive because the tax advantages for 'qualifying investors' are considerable. The...

Anyone thinking of starting a family by entering into a foreign surrogacy arrangement should take careful note of a High Court case in which a well-meaning couple ended up in a legal tangle due to their ignorance of the law. Twin girls were born to a...

It is commonly thought that where a business supplies something for no payment to an employee or director, this is a 'perk of the job' and has no tax consequences. In the case of VAT, this is true where a gift is given to a person and the total of gifts...

A sign that the level of business investment in the economy is on the up comes in the form of a report that 'asset based' borrowing to finance business assets and property increased to an all-time high of £4.2 billion in 2014, up 9 per cent on...

Although it is normally sound procedure to appoint an attorney to act in respect of your affairs should you become incapable of doing so yourself, where this precaution is not taken, it is still possible for your relations to apply to the Court of Protection...

Local authorities are obliged to offer suitable accommodation to homeless people, taking into account their particular circumstances and vulnerabilities. In one case, however, the Court of Appeal ruled that a council had fully met the duty it owed to a...

The increasing ability of the media to report family proceedings has given rise to judicial differences of opinion in respect of the difficult balance to be struck between individual privacy rights and the benefits of enhanced public scrutiny. In one case ,...

A recent report revealed that 81 per cent of large organisations and 60 per cent of small ones suffered a breach of security in 2014. With cyber attacks on most businesses (at least in the form of emails carrying viruses) now a routine occurrence, it is of...