At Hylton-Potts, we’ve come across hundreds of cases where members of the public have wrongly had their tax credits deducted or benefits stopped, due to clerical errors or other considerations which were not their fault. However, a different kind of headline has been making the news recently, and as your go-to reference point and expert on these matters, we thought we’d better bring it to your attention. Hopefully, if you find yourself in these strange circumstances, it will help to reassure you before you pick up the phone to us. As the saying goes, the two things that we can…
Recently, we published a post about the DWP Universal Credit report. While the system is still very much in its infancy, the statistics clearly indicated that changes needed to be made if it were to be rolled out on a national scale. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise to hear that Universal Credits has one again been spotted in the limelight, this time where tenants are concerned. According to a recent study referenced in an article by Inside Housing, tenants on Universal Credit owe, on average, £321.05. By comparison, all tenants in arrears owe a lower…
The decision to divorce can be a painful and distressing one for the whole family. Whether there’s only yourself and your spouse to consider though, or children in the mix as well, it’s completely natural for your thoughts to quickly move on to the family home. Do you sell it? Who lives there? What’s best for everyone concerned? With property prices at an all-time high, the property ladder has never been more counter-productive for a quick sale. Plus, affordability criteria have made it ever more difficult for couples who are planning to buy together, let alone for the newly-divorced who…
The voices of children will always be heard by family judges in care proceedings, but they are not always decisive and can be outweighed by other factors. In one case, a boy’s vociferous wish to live in England with his mother was overruled by a judge who found that his best interests lay in returning to Ireland to live with his paternal family. The boy was aged nine when his parents separated. Due to the mother’s chaotic lifestyle and mental health problems, a court directed that he should be cared for in Ireland by his father and paternal grandparents. However,…
Divorce cases involving the very rich are over-represented in court reports for the simple reason that where the family is very wealthy, the costs of arguing over the division of the assets are deemed to be worth incurring, which may not be the case for families with much more modest assets. However, the legal principles that apply are the same in all cases. In a recent case, a man’s ex-wife sought a divorce settlement of some £29 million against his offer of £8 million. The husband had brought very substantial inherited wealth into the marriage and it was agreed that…
The breakdown of a relationship is sadly often accompanied by dispute over the ownership of once shared possessions. However, one High Court case vividly shows why it is nearly always sensible to seek compromise with the benefit of legal advice, rather than resort to costly litigation. A wealthy same-sex couple had never formalised their 15-year relationship, but both viewed it as akin to marriage. Together they had achieved considerable financial success, establishing a substantial property portfolio and a lucrative chain of tanning salons. Following the acrimonious parting of their ways, however, they could not agree on who owned what. Title…
Cohabitation without a living together or cohabitation agreement is a common source of legal dispute when a relationship breaks up, as a recent case involving a very wealthy businessman and his ex-girlfriend shows. When the couple split up, the businessman claimed that the house in which his ex-girlfriend lived was held on trust for him, despite the fact that his name was not on the deeds. He had paid the £100,000 deposit on the £650,000 house, the costs of its purchase and all the instalments on the mortgage. However, the property was in his ex-girlfriend’s sole name and the First-tier…
Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a lot of reporting around the planned child tax credit changes, and the protests by Scottish SNP MP, Alison Thewliss, about their “medieval” nature. However, when looking at the details behind the proposals, it’s unsurprising that the Government and George Osbourne are attracting such a lot of negative attention. The changes surround eligibility for child tax credits, which will see a two-child limit placed on parents in terms of how many children they are able to claim for. At Hylton-Potts, we handle queries from families on a daily basis who have…
There have been many stories in the news recently about the Universal Credit reform and what it means for the millions of families across Britain. Here at Hylton-Potts, we’ve written numerous posts too, to try to help you understand the facts and guide you through the claims process. However, recently the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has published its first annual fraud and error findings for its Universal Credit programme. This critique forms part of their more general report on the benefits system across the 2015/16 period. We thought, given the attention that this reform has received, that we’d…
An article the solicitors Journal www.solicitorsjournal.com on 19 April 2016 is well worth a look The judges are moving away from a needs only approach to deciding spousal maintenance. The judge must to consider whether a ‘clean break’ can be achieved, and no spousal maintenance is paid (child maintenance is dealt with separately). If the judge decides to make a maintenance order, he must consider imposing a term sufficient to allow the financially weaker party to reach financial independence without ‘undue hardship’. The cases of Miller and McFarlane created the three guiding principles of ‘needs’, ‘compensation’, and ‘sharing’ in determining …
