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Making a will without the benefit of professional legal advice is an excellent recipe for strife between your loved ones after you are gone. That was sadly so in the case of a cancer sufferer who had no understanding that, when she signed her will, she was disinheriting her two beloved children. About two and a half years before she succumbed to the disease, the middle-aged woman signed a will which had been drafted for her by her younger brother using a template downloaded from the internet. Save for her...

Landowners intent on developing their properties can find it intensely annoying when neighbours resist their plans. However, as a High Court ruling made plain, the right to object to planning applications is one of the benefits of living in a democratic country where freedom of expression is taken seriously. The case concerned a property set in an area of outstanding natural beauty, which had become the focus of acrimonious and intractable dispute. Over the years, its owner had made over 50 separate planning applications, many of which drew objections from...

Those who attempt to lie their way to a favourable result in divorce proceedings are more than likely to be found out and hit hard in the pocket. That was certainly so in the case of an elderly entrepreneur who treated his ex-wife's financial claims as if they were nothing more than an impertinence. The English man and his American ex-wife, both in their 70s, were married for almost 30 years before they entered into a separation agreement in New York. The wife subsequently petitioned for divorce in England. Their...

Borrowers who take out loans at high rates of interest with their eyes wide open may have only themselves to blame. As a High Court case showed, however, such loans may be vulnerable to arguments that they amount to a penalty or are the product of an unfair relationship between a commercial lender and a less sophisticated or vulnerable borrower. A property owner obtained a six-month bridging loan secured by second mortgages over three buy-to-let flats. The £355,000 loan was subject to interest at a rate of 2.5 per cent...