This Solicitors Journal article is well worth a read for those whose marriage arrangements include a prenuptial agreement. Since the landmark Radmacher case there have been other court cases which have clarified how Radmacher is applied in practice. Luckwell v Limata In this case there was a prenuptial agreement where the parties had three children and the effect of the prenuptial agreement would leave the husband in a ‘predicament of real need’. The wife had an allowance of £81,000 p.a. and £7m of assets in her own name. The husband was on the minimum wage, and had no property. A…
When divorcing, a failure to make a complete and truthful statement of one’s financial circumstances when ordered to do so by the court can prove to be a costly mistake, as a wealthy man has found. The millionaire executive lied in an attempt to hide his true wealth from his wife in the midst of their bitter divorce. His reward for being economical with the truth was to be ordered to hand her the keys to their £2 million home, following a ruling of the Court of Appeal. The husband claimed that he had no interest in and derived no…
A woman who sued her ex-partner for a half share of his £500,000 home – on the basis that she and members of her family had put two years of toil into renovating the property before the relationship ended – has had her claim rejected by a judge. The woman had been ‘devastated’ when her boyfriend broke up with her four months after moving into his new home. There was no dispute that she and her relatives had worked hard restoring the property to a good state of repair and decoration in the belief that the couple would live there…
I hope you are sitting down as you read this post, because what I am about to tell you is so shocking it almost sounds unreal. A few weeks ago we featured a blog post concerning the shortage of health care professionals and the pressure on the NHS. The article worked through all of the relevant issues to show that as the situation stands at the moment, the NHS is not sustainable without the import of doctors and nurses from overseas. Now the government has introduced legislation that will require all foreign-sourced employees from outside the European Economic Area (EEA)…
An article in the Solicitors Journal on 23rd June, www.solicitorsjournal.com is well worth reading Universal Credit. How does UC work? Under UC, there is no cap to the number of hours someone can work. The amount received, however will, go down as earnings increase. Also there is a cap was introduced to ensure that the amount received by way of benefits for those of working age did not exceed the average wage for working families. Some capital assets will also be taken into account, such as second homes and savings. The threshold is additional capital of £16,000, and care must…
Recently we posted an article on our blog that presented some case studies of famous divorces that have been very important in determining the outcomes of other cases. By learning about such cases, you can gain a better understanding of what to expect, and it can help with developing a strategic framework to work from. In this post we present a few more important divorce case studies that we feel will have relevance in the future of divorce law, and examine what these cases can tell us about the legal system and how judges tend to reach their decisions. Prest…
It is a logical assumption that when two people decide to go their separate ways after being married for a period of time that their assets should be divided equally between them. While that often is the case, there are plenty of exceptions to this ‘rule’. Just a short time ago, UK divorce law was written in a way that assumed that married women had no means of supporting themselves, because that was usually the case. It was only recently that these laws were reformed to more accurately reflect modern societal standards, due largely to the efforts of lawyers and…
I strongly recommend a read of the article in the Law Society Gazette on 13th April 2015 www.lawgazette.co.uk The article highlights the conflicting legal cases over the pension bankrupt. The issue is whether a pension which has not yet been drawn down by a bankrupt, but which he is able to draw down, if he wants to, is ‘in the nature of income… to which he from time to time becomes entitled’ for the purposes of an income payments order (IPO). And IPO is an order obtained by the trustee to take all a part of the bankrupt’s income. Most…
How much of a price can you put on freedom? This is the fundamental question that anyone contemplating intentional fraud should be asking, because essentially their freedom is what they are staking in a high-risk gamble against being caught. As we have explored in previous blog posts here on the Hylton-Potts website, government statistics show that intentional fraud by benefits claimants is exceptionally rare. Many of those who get “caught” are not actually guilty of fraud; yet innocent people may be prosecuted and sometimes even convicted. This tragic injustice usually occurs because the accused person often does not know what…
An excellent article in the financial Times is well worth a read http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7309cb48-e1c5-11e4-8d5b-00144feab7de.html#axzz3Y2pwxGoo HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has already received a huge amount of data about UK residents with Swiss bank accounts. There is an increase of criminal prosecutions. New proposals including a “strict liability” rule a taxpayer could be deemed to have committed a criminal offence without the Crown needing to prove that he deliberately set out to conceal offshore income that is taxable. This Draconian measure can reverse the normal burden of proof. However, if you act quickly you can still make use of the agreement between…
