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Setting up family trusts with minors or those with mental incapacities as beneficiaries is by no means uncommon and it sometimes occurs that such trusts need to be varied for one reason or another. The mechanism for this is the Variation of Trusts Act 1958, which allows the beneficiaries of a trust to vary its terms if they all agree. Where a beneficiary is unable to give such agreement (as is the case for minors and those with a mental incapacity), the variation must be referred to the court. A...

The validity of pre-nuptial agreements depends on legal advice being taken on both sides, equal bargaining positions and overall fairness. In one case, the High Court found that a wife in a big money divorce case was bound by such an agreement and awarded her just over 12 per cent of her ex-husband's millions. The former couple had both been married before. The husband had been through a particularly bruising divorce and had three young children. After the birth of the couple's son, the wife began to press the husband...

Harassment is very unpleasant and, when a person is subject to a campaign of abuse, it can prove extremely upsetting. Furthermore, it is often quite possible for the abuser to preserve their anonymity. In such circumstances, it might seem that there is little that can be done, but that is not so, as a recent case shows. A woman sex worker received a series of increasingly abusive phone calls and messages from an anonymous person, and a number of websites were established which also contained abusive and defamatory content about...

Giving someone else power of attorney over your finances can be a useful means of ensuring that your affairs will be properly managed if you lose the capacity to do so yourself. However, one case in which a war veteran's money was plundered by a man he considered to be a friend shows how sensible it is to entrust such powers to professionals. The pensioner, who fought in the Second World War, granted his friend an enduring power of attorney (EPA) when he felt that his faculties were waning. After...