Blog
17th June 2019
If you have been gifted a property or have acquired one at a significantly reduced price, you may wonder at your good fortune. What you may not have considered, however, are the potential implications of the Insolvency Act 1986 (as amended by the Insolvency Act (No 2) Act 1994) and its long-reaching impact. If at some point in the chain of title, which includes all…
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10th June 2019
An amputee faces many challenges. The loss of a limb can be devastating and will affect all aspects of an individual’s life. The most obvious impact is on their physical life, however losing a limb will also have a psychological and emotional effect, as well as making a real difference to a patient’s social life and surroundings. Anyone undergoing an amputation will not only need…
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24th May 2019
When did you last review your investments and wider finances? In today’s climate of persistently low interest rates many investments, particularly those providing instant access on cash deposits, pay interest rates well below current inflation that measures 2.4 per cent according to the Retail Price Index. Even long-term and fixed-rate investments are paying interest rates much lower than their historic averages. As a result, allowing…
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17th May 2019
Acting as an attorney or a deputy for a loved one can bring with it some very difficult decision-making. How do you know you are making the correct decisions for a person who is no longer able to decide for themselves? What guidance is available to support you in your role so that you do not fall foul of the rules? The rules for attorneys…
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10th May 2019
Many of us have forsaken high street stores and now shop online from the comfort of our homes or the convenience of our workplaces – and we have come to accept that it is our right to return goods purchased via the internet if they do not meet our expectations, even if there is nothing intrinsically wrong with them. Until now online retailers have been…
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07th May 2019
Doctors themselves commonly refer to pain being whatever their patient says it is, showing just how subjective ‘pain’ can be. The matter is further complicated when it comes to considering the causes of pain, which themselves are often as multifaceted as the pain itself. Medical parlance splits ‘pain’ into two headings: acute pain and chronic pain. Acute pain is described as pain lasting no longer…
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26th April 2019
Vicarious liability is the legal obligation on an employer to be responsible for the negligence or other misdeed of an employee if that action occurred during the course of the employee’s work or was sufficiently linked to it. The UK’s law courts have regularly reviewed the boundaries of vicarious liability and it can be useful to consider a recent High Court case relating to an…
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24th April 2019
Option agreements and promotion agreements have become increasingly popular both with landowners and property developers – so what are they, when can they be used, and what differentiates one type of agreement from the other? Option and promotion agreements are ways of extracting capital from land with development potential. Both types of agreement give entitlement to an interest in the land – either to the…
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12th April 2019
If, like me, you would have thought the 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act was all about recovering funds from the proceeds of fraud or drug deals, think again. As an example, a businessman has been ordered to pay almost £40,000 after illegally lopping back a mature oak tree in his back garden. Mr Wilson added a Juliet balcony to the master bedroom of his luxury…
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11th April 2019
I suspect I am not alone in acknowledging that the issue of mental capacity can be devilishly challenging. However, I am strongly of the opinion that all professionals working in the field of capacity carry a grave responsibility, in the interests of justice and of human rights, when seeking to protect some of the most vulnerable in our society. In this article, I will seek…
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