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Many businesspeople lead peripatetic lives of constant international travel and the crucial question of whether they are settled in the UK for tax purposes can be very difficult to answer. A First-tier Tribunal (FTT) ruling, however, revealed the lengths to which HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) will go to establish that a taxpayer is ordinarily resident in this country. The case concerned the tax treatment of £578,400 received by an overseas national on the severance of an employment contract. He claimed that, by virtue of Section 414 of the Income...

If an elderly man had listened to his solicitor's repeated advice to make a will, his children would have avoided a sea of trouble after his death. His failure to do so resulted in a bitter High Court dispute and a judge's finding that one of his daughters resorted to forgery in a bid to inherit almost everything he owned. Following his death, his daughter claimed to have discovered a photocopy of his will. The home-made document – the original of which was never found – purported to bequeath to...

Many tenants who forego legal advice before subletting their homes to tourists and other short-term visitors do so in blissful ignorance that they may well be breaching the terms of their leases. That was certainly so in the case of a flat dweller whose use of AirBnB placed the roof over his head in jeopardy. After receiving complaints from the man's neighbours, his landlord took action before the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) and obtained a declaration under the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 that he had breached covenants in his...

Many divorcees feel that judges have given them a raw deal when dividing up marital assets. They may or may not be right about that but, as one case strikingly showed, it makes much better sense for them to seek swift professional advice than to sit on their hands dwelling on what might have been. The case concerned a middle-aged couple whose relationship lasted for almost 15 years and resulted in two children prior to their divorce. Their assets comprised over £400,000 yielded from the sale of their former matrimonial...