A recent High Court case shows the dangers of negotiating in a dispute without legal representation. It also illustrates that an agreement which disposes of an interest in land does not have to be in writing if the purpose of…
A London couple who ran a guest house together have had the ownership of their assets decided after an acrimonious court case. They had been together since the early 1990s and had a son. In 1996, the male partner bought…
The High Court has confirmed that residential landlords need to take a genuine approach to improvement works if they hope to pass costs on to their tenants. The court held that qualifying works under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985…
In a ruling which illustrates the pitfalls of inaccurate land sale particulars, members of a family who sold their vegetable patch to a developer for more than £150,000 have been ordered to repay the money by a judge who found…
Readers are reminded that on 1 October 2012, changes to the Money Laundering Regulations came into force that will affect many businesses, particularly those that engage in high-value transactions or that offer services involving the exchange of money. Broadly, the…
A High Court ruling has underlined the dangers inherent in purchasing property at auction without taking proper legal advice. A disabled woman is facing a financial catastrophe after she made a successful telephone bid for a substantial property, without commissioning…
When a couple heeded the advice of their mortgage adviser and put the property they bought together into only one of their names, an eventual dispute over who owned what was always a possibility. The man paid all of the…
A recent Court of Appeal decision reinforces the importance for businesses of having insurance cover for losses occasioned by fire on their premises. The decision clarified that, although damage caused by fire emanating from an adjoining property could fall within…
There is a presumption in law that where a property adjoins a highway, the landowner owns the soil up to the middle of the highway unless it can be shown that this is clearly not intended to be the case…
Money laundering legislation requires banks to freeze transactions pending clearance if there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that the funds concerned in the transaction may be the proceeds of crime or connected with criminal activity. The procedure involves the filing…
