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With significant losses being reported in 'pension transfer scams', it is no surprise that when the administrators of a pension scheme receive a request to transfer a pension to a new scheme, they are expected to conduct an appropriate due diligence process. However, the trustees are also under a duty not to procrastinate over the transfer. The combination of obligations recently led to a decision by the Pensions Ombudsman in favour of a man whose transfer of his self-invested personal pension was delayed several months when the scheme administrators engaged...

You may have good reasons for writing close relatives out of your will but, as any lawyer will tell you, the consequence of doing so can be family discord after you are gone. That was certainly so in one case concerning a father who disinherited his daughter by his first marriage. The man's will left the whole of his estate to his second wife and appointed her and one of his nieces as his executors. In a statement attached to the will he explained that he was leaving nothing to...

Restrictions on land use appear in the title deeds of many properties – but the law permits their deletion or modification if they become obsolete over time or stand in the way of reasonable development. Exactly that happened in one case in which the Upper Tribunal (UT) opened the way for construction of three new homes in a large suburban garden despite neighbours' objections. The garden once formed a large field on the outskirts of a major city. Part of it was subject to a restrictive covenant, dated 1928, which...

Although commercial surrogacy businesses have long been banned in the UK, the Court of Appeal recently ruled that a clinical negligence victim would not be breaking the law were she to enter into such an arrangement in California, where a more liberal surrogacy regime prevails. The woman is unable to have children after she developed cervical cancer and had to undergo radical surgery. The NHS trust that was responsible for her treatment was ordered by a judge to pay her almost £600,000 in compensation after it admitted that four opportunities...