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A surprising Court of Appeal decision that a daughter was a 'dependant' of her estranged mother and thus entitled to benefit from her estate has now been overturned by the Supreme Court. Heather Ilott had been deliberately excluded from the will of her mother, Melita Jackson. Mother and daughter had become estranged after Ms Ilott left home at the age of 17 to live with a man of whom Mrs Jackson disapproved. Mrs Jackson's will left her entire estate to three animal charities with which she had no particular connection. Ms...

When an elderly man died owning both a house and a half share in an attached property with his sister, whose financial affairs were already being administered by a cousin under a power of attorney, the scene was set for the cousin to seize ownership of the property. The cousin took over dealing with the deceased man's estate. She claimed to have found a will, whilst cleaning out his house prior to putting it up for sale, which left his own house and his half share in the adjoining property...

The answer to the vital question of whether a taxpayer is 'ordinarily resident' in the UK depends on many factors. In one such case, a billionaire businessman received an £84 million tax bill after HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) refused to accept that he had made his home in Monaco. HMRC claimed that the tax was due after the man's sale of a tranche of shares in his company yielded £200 million. He argued that, at the time of the sale, he and his partner were living in a hotel...

Social housing tenants are not normally permitted to sublet their properties. Where it is discovered that they have, an Unlawful Profits Order (UPO) can be made to recover any profit made by the tenant. This is normally based on the difference between the rent charged to the subtenant and the rent the tenant pays to the landlord. Where a UPO is granted after an application by the landlord, that is not the end of the matter for the tenant, as a recent case shows. It dealt with a tenant who...