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A High Court ruling has underlined the dangers inherent in purchasing property at auction without taking proper legal advice. A disabled woman is facing a financial catastrophe after she made a successful telephone bid for a substantial property, without...

When a married, middle-aged multimillionaire became enamoured with a much younger woman, leading to an acrimonious divorce, a dispute over the family assets was inevitable. The husband had inherited an estate that included more than 1,500 acres of land and...

Many people have suffered losses because of the collapse of property values in Spain. In a recent case , a woman who found herself with a mortgage she could not afford to repay sought redress on the basis that the broker who had advised her when setting up...

When considering a trade mark, it is the mark as a whole which needs to be looked at. The obviousness of this point was illustrated by a recent case in the General Court of the European Union . The Court had to consider a claim that the trade mark of major...

When an academic who had retired to Cornwall bequeathed the bulk of his estate to charity, the will was opposed by his nephew. The man, a widower, had realised that he needed help and could no longer live alone after a lawnmower disappeared from an...

Tenants of commercial premises know that rent is not a taxable supply for VAT purposes unless the landlord has elected to waive the VAT exemption in respect of the premises. However, there are other sorts of supply (such as cleaning) that are, in principle,...

A dispute between two landowners that lasted several years seems to have finally ended, with one of them being fined for failing to comply with a court order. The two neighbours had been in a long-term dispute about the right of one of them to use the...

Property developers often spend very considerable sums in advance of seeking and obtaining planning permissions, let alone before any work on the development site commences. Recently, several residents’ groups have sought to counter developments they...

The treasurer of a Christian charity has been jailed after he stole more than £500,000 from two charities. Accountant Steven Methuen was responsible for the finances of Amblecote Christian Centre in Stourbridge, West Midlands. A joint investigation by...

When a child maintenance assessment is made, the court is entitled to rely on all the information available to it to set the appropriate liability to pay maintenance. This may or may not mean relying on disclosures of earnings made to HM Revenue and Customs...