Question: I lost my job recently without any verbal or written warnings. I had been working for this company for 8 years and had been loyal to them and worked hard. So this was totally out of the blue and unexpected, to the point even colleagues, friends and family couldn’t believe what had happened as I loved my job. I have been told to take this to an employment tribunal, how much would this cost me and what would the likely outcome of this be? When I was dismissed, I was earning £18’000 a year. Answer: Dismissal without warning has…
Question: My daughter has been working as a receptionist and for past month and really enjoyed her job. However, on Monday morning she overslept but rang in straight away to let her employers knows that she would be late to work. It was then that she was told to take day off and that the Manager would be in touch with her about what happened. He doesn’t actually work in office, so she had trouble getting in touch with him and tried for days to get hold of him. She left dozens of voice messages and texts to find out…
Judge McCreath made a serious mistake in jailing Tim Haries. I hereby publicly offer to select, brief and pay a top barrister to get him out. I work closely with Families need Fathers, and have supported Fathers 4 Justice for many years, and I have been through this agony myself. Lawyers must realise that whilst not being doctors, the work they do can affect lives, as much as doctors do, and by lawyers, I include judges. The Queen could, and never will, comment on this decision by a judge, but if ever there was a case for the dispensation…
The man, who is in his mid-30s, had asked to be given the right to care for his seven-year-old after her mother died suddenly. However, the judge decided that although he said he loved the girl, the father had neither the ‘understanding’ nor the ‘ability’ to meet her emotional needs after such a heartbreaking loss. ‘I do not doubt that in his own way he deeply loves his daughter,’ he said. ‘He may love her, as he did frequently say he loves her. Sadly, in life that is not enough. So fathers who want to gain a Residence Order (custody)…
This article appeared in the solicitors Journal on 30th January 2014 and is reproduced with their kind permission Making court advisory notes to the public is a sensible move but will the growing army of citizen journalists take any notice, asks Amber Melville-Brown Tweeters, bloggers, Facebookers beware: with great power comes great responsibility. And with the world at your fingertips at every stroke of the keyboard, you have great power. It has prompted Dominic Grieve QC, the Attorney General, to make court advisory notes – previously only issued to the mainstream media – available to the public on the UK.gov…
Press reports that prenuptial agreements, and pre-civil partnership agreements are be given legal status is misleading. They work now if properly drafted and the correct procedure is followed. The Supreme Court has already ruled that courts should give effect to pre-nuptial contracts where freely entered into and where it would not be unfair to do so. So if you get the procedure right, time to reflect, full disclosure and independent legal advice, a pre-nup or pre-cip will work. At Hylton-Potts working as a team to keep costs down we can draft a legally binding prenup or pre-cip for £595…
Under Government plans, a claimant or defendant will have to pay higher fees. The bigger the claim, the higher the fees, up to a six-fold increase. Litigants will also pay according to how many days they are in court, so the case drags on they end up paying more. The proposed massive fee rises for those using civil and commercial courts will send a damaging message that the UK regards wealthy litigants as a cash cow. Court Fee increases of up to £20,000 come on top of fees that are already higher than New York. An uncontested divorce fee would…
First published in the solicitors Journal on 28 January 2014 and reproduced here with their kind permission. ‘Clerical error’ given a broad definition including errors arising from routine work Disputed wills should be interpreted using the same rules as those applicable to the interpretation of contracts, the Supreme Court has held in a case involving mirror wills where the spouses signed the other’s will instead of their own by mistake. Distinguishing between a contract and a will on the basis that one was made between several parties and the other by a single party was “an unconvincing reason to adopting…
It takes several weeks for the County Court bailiffs to carry out the eviction, after a County Court possession order. Many lawyers advise that to obtain possession ‘in days’, Landlords should apply for the case to be transferred to the High Court once the possession order has been made, so that a High Court Enforcement Officer can carry out the eviction. The county court has power to transfer a case to the High Court and if proceedings for enforcement are transferred, the order may be enforced as a High Court order, by the far more effective High Court Sheriff. Unlike…
‘Habitual residence’ in is an important issue in an international tug-of-war over where children should live. The Supreme Court ruled, in LC (Children) (No 2), when considering the issue of habitual residence (determined by whether there has been some degree of integration by the child in the social and family environment in the country), regard should be given to child’s state of mind at the relevant time – that is to say, the period she lived abroad. The importance of the issue to secure a finding that the children were habitually resident in England is this. EU entries are bound…
