LawSkills Articles

Calming ‘upset’ clients is different from dealing with ‘difficult’ ones. When a reasonable person gets upset they may have momentary lapses of unreasonableness but basically that person is still rational and reasonable. By contrast difficult [...]

The Deceased’s wishes, whether expressed or not, ought to be taken into account in accordance with Article 8 – the right to private and family life. But how does this sit with the position that there is no property in a corpse? How then can a [...]

An organisation called Tax Justice Network was reported in the Guardian on 3 June 2019 as having published a report entitled “How Inheritance Tax breaks favour the well-off”. It comments on the application and use of Business Property Relief [...]

It has finally been announced that the new SRA Accounts Rules are being adopted from 25 November this year (2019). This has come after months of speculation as to the exact adoption date which was first meant to be last year and then April of [...]

The payment protection insurance (PPI) scandal has been with us for several years now, and a deadline for new claims has been set by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of 29 August 2019. But what do your personal representatives (PRs) need to [...]

It is imperative to look at all inheritance tax planning for the UK farming industry, especially with the introduction of the Agriculture Bill and increasingly elderly farmers. Emphasis must be given to the interaction of the surviving [...]

As many of you know, I suffer from inflammatory bowel disease which means I must be careful what I eat. I am intolerant of gluten, dairy and eggs. This makes life interesting when I am travelling about, staying in a variety of places to deliver [...]

The fraught difficulty of who has the right to choose how the corpse is to be disposed of; where it is to be buried and/or whether it should be cremated and then who owns the ashes only rarely issues for the Courts to decide because either the [...]

When it comes to administering estates, you can be faced with many challenges including intestacy, missing beneficiaries, overseas assets, bankrupt beneficiaries and more. All these challenges come with a significant level of risk surrounding [...]

In December 2018, high street bank Santander was fined nearly £33m for failing to pass on the assets of deceased customers to their personal representatives and beneficiaries. In some cases, said the Financial Conduct Authority, the bank failed [...]