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Failing to make reasonable provision for your dependants in your will is to positively invite discord between your loved ones after you are gone. That was certainly so in the case of a man who bequeathed not a penny to his elderly widow. The man wanted his fortune – which was estimated to be worth up to £1.99 million – to pass solely down the male line. By his will, he divided his estate equally between his two sons. He made no provision at all for his four daughters or...

Landowners should sit up and take notice of the Court of Appeal's ground-breaking decision to award thousands of pounds in compensation to a property investor, the value of whose land was blighted by notoriously invasive Japanese knotweed. The case concerned an investment property that adjoined local authority-owned land on which the pernicious weed had apparently been growing for over 50 years. Its owner sought damages from the council on the basis that the plant's relentless encroachment onto his land amounted to a nuisance. Following two hearings, the owner succeeded in establishing...

Discerning where an individual is domiciled for tax purposes can involve delving far back into his or her family history. In a case on point, a tax tribunal's inquiries began with the birth of a wealthy businessman's father in Austria at the end of the First World War and his subsequent flight from Nazi oppression to England. In challenging tax assessments in respect of a four-year period, the businessman asserted that he was domiciled in England for none of those years. In determining his appeal, the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) was...

Any proposal for a child to have gender surgery is likely to be subject to close judicial scrutiny. In opening the way for a teenager to undergo a double mastectomy abroad, however, the High Court reminded local authorities that they must always treat the welfare of the child concerned as the paramount factor. The case concerned a 16-year-old who was assigned to the female gender at birth but who had lived socially as a boy for some years. On the basis that he was, and always had been, male, he...