Posts by colin

It’s probably not at the top of your ‘to do’ list but, as your family expands, it is important to consider making or reviewing an existing will otherwise you may be storing up potential future problems for your family. Not having a will in place could mean your assets may not automatically pass to those…

A recent Court of Appeal decision has sent a firm warning to litigants and their legal advisers in respect of the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution (“ADR”). The decision in Thakkar & Anr v Patel & Anr [2017] EWCA Civ 217 should be noted by all litigants as it confirms what the Courts expect of…

29th March 2019 will herald Brexit, at least for now. Any lawyer monitoring discussions between Brussels and Westminster can recognise a protracted mediation in full swing, with bouts of brinksmanship followed by small concessions and slow, gentle steps forward. The question is what Brexit will mean in practical terms for us and how might it…

To reduce your risk of becoming a victim of property fraud, you can: Sign up to the Land Registry’s free property alert service – the Land Registry will then notify you by email when certain applications affect your property, such as a new mortgage or change of ownership. To sign up visit: www.gov.uk/property-alert Ensure your…

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter – they connect us to friends old and new and give our businesses access to customers and markets we couldn’t have dreamed possible just a handful of years ago. I’m of the generation where our maths teachers told us to put our calculators away (solar powered Casio, anyone?), as we wouldn’t be…

If you own or occupy a property, and someone else’s actions (or inactions) are causing you problems, then an injunction is your ultimate legal weapon. It is a court order which forces someone to do something they are legally obliged to do (such as a landlord repairing a building), or prevents someone doing something they…

The farmer’s ‘hedge and ditch’ rule is still used to determine the line of a boundary. There is an old rule, or presumption, dating from the early 1800s, about where the boundary of agricultural land lies. Called the ‘hedge and ditch’ rule, it states that where two properties are divided by a hedge and a…

Cases involving wills and estate disputes often hit the headlines. These are typically ‘family at war’ stories, where one or more family members were cut out of a will, or at least did not receive their fair share of an estate. For instance, in Ilott v Mitson (2015) before the Court of Appeal, a daughter…

When someone dies, their will can sometimes be a surprise to family members. The children of the deceased might be given only small bequests, with a neighbour given the bulk of the estate; a brother might be left more than a sister; a charity might be left everything, with the family excluded entirely. If the…

On 1 April 2016 a new higher rate of stamp duty was introduced for second homes. The change to the duty – formally called Stamp Duty Land Tax, or SDLT – led to a rush to complete transactions, and given that the deadline coincided with the Easter weekend, there were some long days for conveyancers…