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Law firms focused on ensuring their clients' peace of mind generally provide secure storage facilities for their important documents. A High Court inheritance dispute triggered by a landowner's missing will underlined the risks of keeping such documents at home where they can all too easily be mislaid. Less than five years before his premature death from a brain tumour, the landowner signed a professionally drafted will by which he left the bulk of his estate to a close friend. Something of a hoarder, he chose to keep the original document...

Where a transaction appears to be very one-sided or manifestly more advantageous to one side or the other, judicial eyebrows are likely to be raised. However, as a High Court ruling showed, such an imbalance does not necessarily mean that a bargain should be set aside on grounds that it is unconscionable or the product of undue influence. A householder was anxious to pay off a £41,000 debt to a local authority which was secured by way of a charge – effectively a mortgage – over his property. To that...

Those whose tax affairs are allowed to fall into disarray must live in permanent fear that HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) will in due course descend upon them. Such anxiety proved well justified in the case of a businessman who was on the receiving end of seven-figure back-tax assessments. Following an investigation of his finances, the man received four VAT assessments and 20 Income Tax and Capital Gains Tax assessments, together with various late payment penalties. The earliest assessments related to the tax year ending in 1993. After HMRC launched...

Most divorcees would, wherever possible, prefer to achieve a clean financial break so that they can regain their independence and move on with their lives. A High Court ruling provided a powerful illustration of why that is a sensible choice. The case concerned a former couple in their 60s who had been divorced for almost a decade. Assets worth about £1.8 million had been divided between them by a judge, but a clean break was not achieved in that the husband was required to pay the wife spousal maintenance of...