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Rights of way over land are a constant source of dispute and, because the law relating to land is complex, such disputes all too frequently end up in avoidable court proceedings. A recent case heard by Bristol County Court was brought by a man who claimed a right of way over his neighbours' land. This was necessary in order for him to reach another piece of land – over which there was an explicit right of way – so that he could access the highway. The argument related to two properties...

There really is little point in instructing lawyers to represent you if you do not then listen to their advice. In one case which illustrates this, two women dispensed with the services of not just one but two legal teams, after they were advised to discontinue their legal fight, and persisted in mounting an utterly pointless challenge to a matriarch's will. The women were the daughter and granddaughter of the deceased woman, whose will divided her property equally between her 12 children. The two women had lived with her and...

It is not often that the facts about how much of a mortgage was repaid are a matter of dispute, but in a recent case that was what happened and the decision led to a judge being criticised for her unorthodox approach to the evaluation of evidence. A couple owned a house which they had bought with the aid of a mortgage of £200,000. They subsequently remortgaged the property. When the husband died, the mortgage became repayable and the lender sought repayment of the whole sum. When that was not...

According to the Government's GOV.UK website, if you are a company director, you have to file a tax return every year. It says that every UK company director must send in a personal self-assessment tax return annually, and that this must be done even without prompting from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). HMRC took that as authority to levy £1,300 in penalties on a company director who failed to file his tax return for the year 2014-2015 until it was several months overdue. He was not a native English speaker...