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The trouble with informally agreeing with your loved ones what is to happen to your assets after you are gone is that you may not have considered all eventualities, and disputes can arise as to what has and has not been promised. Exactly that lay at the root of a bitter property dispute between a man and his stepmother. The man's father and stepmother each had two children from previous marriages. They held their home as joint tenants and, on his death from cancer, she became the property's sole owner...

English judges are respected around the world – but they are not the sole arbiters of fairness and the decisions of foreign courts must be respected. A family judge made that point in shutting the door on divorce tourism and refusing a Russian ex-wife the opportunity to seek a greater share of her husband's enormous wealth. During the couple's marriage, which lasted over 30 years, they had built up a fortune which the wife estimated at $20 billion. A blizzard of litigation, in Russia and elsewhere, followed the end of...

One secret of a happy life is to get on well with your neighbours and taking legal advice is often the best way of defusing rows before they get out of hand. The point was resoundingly made by a case in which escalating boundary and right of way disputes between homeowners took on the proportions almost of a state trial. The case concerned a house and a cottage which were both accessed via a narrow drive. The owners of the house objected after the cottage owners removed a fence, enabling...

The legal position of 'cryptoassets' – those which exist in electronic form and are held on distributed ledgers, bitcoins being the best-known example – has not been certain in the past. However, a recent legal statement by the Chancellor of the England and Wales High Court has confirmed that they are to be treated like all other property. This has important implications for the estates of deceased people who hold such assets, as well as having importance in a number of other circumstances, such as bankruptcy. The argument that such...