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Lending money to the public is, for obvious reasons, a heavily regulated activity and, as a case concerning timeshare properties showed, any involvement by those who are not authorised to carry out such activity can render credit agreements entirely unenforceable. A bank had entered into more than 1,400 regulated credit agreements with members of the public by which they borrowed money to pay for the timeshare properties. About £47 million was payable under those agreements. It later emerged, however, that they had been brokered by a company that was not...

The High Court of Justice is a very expensive place to resolve a family dispute, as is evidenced by a recent case which pitted members of a farming family against each other: it shows beyond doubt the importance of documenting decisions and retaining the evidence of them. The dispute was over a farm and bungalow, valued together at more than £1.5 million. The difference of opinion was simple. The farm was operated as a partnership between the farmer and his son. When the farmer died, his will left his estate...

The law allows people who occupy land over a long period and use it as their own, without anyone else asserting ownership rights to it, to apply to have their title to it registered at the Land Registry. This is normally called 'squatter's rights' and lawyers know it as 'adverse possession'. There is a procedure that must be followed, and changes were made a few years ago which make it somewhat easier for the owner of the title to the land to prevent its transfer. In practice, it is fairly...

Scams of all shapes and sizes are becoming depressingly frequent and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has warned against the rising tide of pensions scams that leave people facing years of misery in retirement as a result of passing their pension funds across to scammers. According to the FCA the average sum lost is more than £90,000 and its response has been a campaign to raise awareness. The theft of a pension fund often starts with an offer to have a 'free pension review'  by a pension adviser, which is followed...