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Those who doubt the legal advantages of getting married should take note of a case in which an elderly man was left facing homelessness after his partner's unexpected death and had to go to court to seek reasonable provision from her estate. The unmarried couple were of similar age and the man expected that, in the natural course of things, he would probably die first. They lived in a house that was in her sole name and, after she died suddenly, her son – to whom she had left almost...

Many blocks of flats are managed by a residents' association, which has the great advantage of affording tenants democratic rights of self-determination. However, as a decision of the Upper Tribunal (UT) showed, such bodies bear onerous, and often complex, legal responsibilities that can only sensibly be tackled with professional advice. The case concerned a block of 33 flats that had a history of disrepair. The tenant of 13 of those flats was a property company that had not paid service charges for six years since management of the block was...

The law that allows someone who was dependent on a deceased person during their lifetime to make a claim against their estate if there is no, or inadequate, provision for them in the will is one of long standing (the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975). However, many people think it applies only to blood relatives. That this assumption is incorrect was emphatically confirmed in a recent case in which a 70-year-old woman was awarded £325,000 from the estate of a man with whom she had had a...

We all make mistakes…and when a contract is set up the terms of which clearly do not reflect what was intended, the court can be asked to rectify it. A recent case shows that that approach can also be taken with regard to incorrectly drafted trust documents. When a couple wrote their wills, they provided that on death a family trust was to be set up. This was part of an Inheritance Tax (IHT) mitigation exercise. When the wife died, the family home was transferred into the trust, with the...