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An elderly couple who, without taking legal advice, tied up almost half of their net assets in a discretionary trust which, due to a drafting error, did not reflect their true wishes or offer them the flexibility that they required in their retirement had...

When a council proposes to revoke or modify a planning permission already given, it faces a difficult situation. The developer that has been granted the permission may well have committed to considerable expenditure as a result and may be entitled to claim...

Investment advice that turns out to be bad has always been a fruitful area for argument in the courts and numerous cases have arisen over the years. In a recent case , an investor whose bank gave him advice, as a result of which he invested and suffered a...

The Supreme Court has ruled , by a majority of five to two, that advice provided by members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) is not protected by legal advice privilege (LAP). The existence of privilege in respect of...

When a family partnership faced a legal challenge, the partners argued that the legal costs involved were allowable business expenses. The partnership spent more than £36,000 on legal fees defending a claim that the sister of one of the partners was...

Although it has been widely reported that recent changes to the law make squatting in residential premises a criminal offence for the first time, this is not strictly true. Refusing to leave a property when requested by a ‘displaced residential...

Following an earlier consultation on proposed alterations to its guidance on penalties for breaching competition law, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has published revised guidance on how it will determine such penalties in future. The changes are...

The saga of the estate of the late Bernard Matthews, who made his fortune supplying turkey-based products, will serve as a salutary reminder of the complexities that can attach to the affairs of anyone with foreign property. Mr Matthews had expressed the...

A property dealer involved in a high-value divorce case has been given a six-month jail term after he repeatedly refused to comply with court orders that he provide details of his finances to his estranged wife. Scot Young, 51, claims that he lost...

A husband has been ordered to pay his ex-wife more than £4 million in a divorce settlement that treats the wife’s substantial debts as being shared between them. The settlement awards the wife the former matrimonial home, subject to the balance...