The tale of a devoted son labouring for years on a family farm only to be cut out of his father's will is so often told as to be almost a cliché. However, as a High Court ruling showed, such stories are often reflected in the sad and recurring reality of agricultural inheritance disputes. When he died, a father was the beneficial owner of a 20 per cent stake in his family farm. He also held a 25 per cent share of a company that ran a market gardening business...

The ability of modern medical technology to keep patients' hearts beating and their lungs ventilating has led to a blurring of the boundary between life and death. As a High Court ruling showed, it sometimes falls to family judges to make the desperately hard decision as to when that line has been crossed. The case concerned a young man who fell to the ground after being assaulted in a pub garden, sustaining a catastrophic brain injury. He was admitted to hospital in a deep coma and, following weeks of observation...

In coming to the aid of a frail and elderly householder, the High Court has ruled in a landmark case that she was on the receiving end of a fraudulent misrepresentation when a would-be purchaser of her home was falsely described to her as a cash buyer. A copy of a contract before the Court indicated that the woman, aged in her 80s, had signed a contract agreeing to the sale of her home for £840,000. Following a purported exchange of contracts, the purchaser, an investment company, launched proceedings against...

Parents may be worthy of praise and deeply love their children, but it sadly does not always follow that they are able to provide them with a stable home. The High Court made that point in sanctioning a little boy's placement for adoption. Due to concerns that he was not receiving a good enough standard of parenting, a local authority placed him in temporary foster care and sought care and placement orders. His parents, although separated, staunchly resisted plans for his adoption, arguing that his mother was able to look...