LATEST NEWS

Most investors would agree that the price at which shares are listed on an accredited investment exchange is as reliable a guide as any to their open market value. A tax dispute concerning a gift of shares to charity, however, showed that such an assumption may not always be correct. A man received 190,000 shares in a recently formed company as a gift from a friend before gifting them on to a children's charity. Based on the price attributed to the shares on AIM, he asserted that they were, on...

Fathers who are denied access to their children are frequently heard to complain that judges do not do enough to support them. In coming down hard on a defiant mother who refused to countenance her child having contact with her father, however, a family judge showed that paternal rights are never forgotten. Professionals were involved in the child's life even before her birth. Child in need and child protection plans, together with a supervision order, were put in place. Despite a social worker's recommendation that she should have regular contact...

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...