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Residential property often represents the majority of a person's wealth and valuing it for Inheritance Tax (IHT) purposes is, par excellence, a matter for professionals. In a case on point, a son who dispensed with expert tax and valuation advice following his mother's death found himself in very deep water. When the mother died, she owned three terraced houses in the same street. When it came to calculating IHT payable on her estate, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) valued them at £2.42 million in total. Her son, acting as her...

You are perfectly entitled to write your children or other close family members out of your will, but such a course can be an invitation to dispute after you are gone. That was certainly so in a High Court case concerning a man who left everything he owned to a close friend, thereby disinheriting his daughter. The daughter would have been his principal beneficiary under a will he signed four years prior to his death, aged 86. However, a few months before he passed away, he executed a new will...

The emotional element involved in lending money to friends and loved ones makes it all the more necessary to first seek independent professional advice. A case on point concerned a businessman who lent a small fortune to a close friend but had to launch High Court proceedings to get part of his money back. Over some years, the businessman lent substantial sums to his friend, who had encountered financial difficulties. A loan agreement was eventually signed by which the friend agreed that a consolidated debt of £705,000 should be secured...

A word out of place can lead to the sacrifice of valuable legal rights and that is why it is vital to seek professional advice the moment a potential dispute looms on the horizon. The point was made by the case of a couple who faced a challenge to their ownership of two plots of land adjoining their home. The couple bought the land on which they built their home in 1993. Although they did not formally own the adjoining plots, they treated them as their own, using them as...