A digest of some interesting cases over the last 6 months:-
TAX – Lexgreen Services Ltd v. HMRC [2025] UKFTT 1019 (TC)
A company that has made contributions to a trust can be liable for any Inheritance Tax arising on the 10 year anniversary of that trust by virtue of s.201(1)(d) IHTA 1984 ‘if that company is a live company at the time of the relevant transfer’.
TRUSTS – Charity Inquiry: OBAC (2025)
Four charity trustees are disqualified by the Charity Commission, having been found to have ‘not sufficiently overseen the actions of the charity’s CEO’.
PROBATE – Fernandez v. Fernandez [2025] EWHC 2373 (Ch)
When deciding to remove an executor under s.50 AJA 1985 the test is not whether ‘continuation in office would impede the due administration of the estate or cause harm to the beneficiaries’, nor whether the ‘estate was endangered’, and the Court was entitled to take into account various conflicts of interest and ‘that personal hostility was now placing significant hurdles in the way of finalising the administration of the estates’.
WILLS – Jenkins & Anor v. Evans [2025] EWHC 2438 (Ch)
In a case where the ‘golden rule’ was not observed, and it was presumed that the appointment of Solicitor executors would be ‘abused… through improper charging’, the evidence of the Solicitor executor as to mental capacity was considered to carry ‘all the weight which the Court of Appeal in Hughes v. Pritchard, at [79], contemplated it might do’.
COSTS – Grijns v. Grijns [2025] EWHC 2853 (Ch)
In a proprietary estoppel case where the successful party was ‘said to have been unreasonable in their approach to mediation’, the Court finds: ‘There can be no quarrel with the idea that parties, in litigation, should make reasonable efforts to settle… That, however, does not compel, or require, a litigant, confronted by a wholly unreasonable offer, to waste time and cost with dealing with such an offer. Such an obligation would simply be wasteful as to time and cost and, if enforced by way of a costs penalty, would run the real risk that parties would feel themselves, for fear of penalty, compelled to settle unfounded litigation…’