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Relationships that start on the Internet are already leading to some interesting situations. A recent family case involved a British woman who had met a Pakistani man online and married him in the USA, where the couple had two children. Her husband had been taken to the USA as a child, and is strictly an illegal immigrant, although he does not face deportation because as a child immigrant he has 'deferred action' status. However, were he to leave the USA, his readmission would be unlikely. His wife had irregularities associated...

Taxpayers are personally responsible for filing their tax returns on time, and failing to do so can lead to stiff financial penalties. However, in one case, the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) ruled that a self-employed website developer whose accountants lost all of his data following a computer hacking incident had a reasonable excuse for missing the deadline. The man had incurred penalties totalling £3,200 for failing to file two tax returns on time. He had ceased trading as a self-employed person and had no idea that the penalties had been imposed...

Money in a bank account represents the debt due from the bank to the account holder and is not 'property' in the eyes of the law. The Court of Appeal made that point in quashing the convictions of a woman who was accused of abusing her position as a senior employee of a housing charity to steal almost £50,000. The woman was alleged to have put in falsely inflated claims for overtime and other payments and was jailed for 16 months after a jury convicted her of six counts of...

When a will is made late in life which materially changes how an estate is to be distributed (especially when the new will favours one of a number of children), a dispute following the death is almost inevitable. So it was when an 85-year-old woman made a new will which left her house to the youngest of her three children. The value of the house was approximately £350,000. It was effectively the only asset in her estate and an earlier will (made when she was 80) had divided her estate...