A digest of some interesting cases over the last 6 months:-
- Trusts
- Tax
- Wills
- Probate
PROBATE – Rahman v. Hassan & Ors [2024] EWHC 1290 (Ch)
Handing over ‘all the security devices, logins and passwords that were needed for accessing… bank and similar financial accounts’ and ‘the land certificate for the house and all the documents relating to the flats… satisfy the requirements for a donatio mortis causa of the contents of the bank accounts and the properties themselves, but not their furniture or contents’.
PROBATE – Winter & Anor v. Winter [2024] EWCA Civ 699
Appeal dismissed. ‘Where… a claimant has made a life-changing choice and over many years undertaken work in reliance on an assurance, the Court will probably be prepared to treat loss of opportunity to lead a different life as itself detrimental’ in a claim for proprietary estoppel.
WILLS – Bond & Anor v. Webster [2024] EWHC 1972 (Ch)
No testamentary capacity where a non-Solicitor ‘private client practitioner’ failed to record any formal assessment of capacity for a wheelchair-bound testator with brain cancer, failed to request a proper assessment from the testator’s treating physician, and failed to record any reasons for departing from the previous Will or as to why the testator was not contemplating 2 of his children in relation to the Will.
TRUSTS – Marcus v. Marcus [2024] EWHC 2086 (Ch)
A child who fails a paternity test still falls within a class of beneficiaries which includes ‘children and remoter issue of…’.
TAX – McCabe v. HMRC [2024] UKUT 280 (TCC)
In the application of the common law test of residence for Capital Gains Tax purposes, transferring the UK family house into his wife’s name, renting or purchasing living and office accommodation in Belgium for 7 years, and electing not to stay overnight at the family house during visits to the UK, was not sufficient to establish that he had ceased to be UK resident.
TAX – Demetriou & Anor v. HMRC [2024] UKFTT 830 (TC)
A managed chalk stream trout fishery ‘was mainly a business of holding investments’ and does not benefit from Inheritance Tax Business Property Relief under s.104 ITA 1984.
PROBATE – Morris v. Morris & Ors [2024] EWHC 2554 (Ch)
Successful application under s.2 Forfeiture Act 1982 for relief from all the effects of the forfeiture rule, in a case of assisted suicide at a clinic in Switzerland.
TAX – Beresford (Dec’d) v. HMRC [2024] UKFTT 952 (TC)
The frequency of transactions for serviced office lets were ‘clearly not analogous to a hotel business’ and the business amounted to ‘wholly or mainly making or holding of investments’ for Inheritance Tax Business Property Relief.