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Almost everyone has returned from a holiday feeling deeply disappointed, but a right to compensation by no means necessarily follows. However, in one case, a couple whose £20,000 polar cruise fell sadly short of their expectations successfully took a stand on their legal rights. The adventurous couple booked a cruise that should have taken them through the celebrated Northwest Passage. However, the route through the Canadian polar waterways, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, proved impassable as sea ice closed in. A different route was taken, but the couple were...

Tensions simmer within many families and, when making your will, you may wish to keep its contents secret from your loved ones so as to avoid feeding the fire. As a High Court case showed, however, that makes it all the more vital to engage a solicitor to assist you in expressing your wishes. By his will, a moderately prosperous businessman bequeathed all that he owned to his wife. The document was dated just over a month before he died in hospital. One of his daughters, who would have inherited...

With widely differing degrees of success, many enthusiastic investors buy and sell shares on their own account in the hope of boosting their incomes – but can such activities be viewed as a 'trade' for tax purposes? The First-tier Tribunal (FTT) addressed that issue in a case of importance to private investors. After receiving a large inheritance, a man retired from his professional job and used part of the money to buy and sell shares on an 'execution only' basis. He had access to a live feed of share prices...

In cases where even a succession of stiff prison sentences has failed to bring about compliance with court orders, what is a judge to do? A family judge faced exactly that quandary in the case of a father who defiantly refused to cooperate in arranging the return of his two daughters from Libya to England. As long ago as 2015, the father flew with his three children to Tunisia on an agreed visit to see their paternal grandmother. Instead of returning to this country, however, he took the children to...