Articles
Lawson West Solicitors in Leicester has secured membership to the Law Society's Conveyancing Quality Scheme - the mark of excellence for the home buying process...
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has lost its bid to charge inheritance tax on farmhouses where the farmland and farmhouse are not owned by the same person...
David Cameron has announced recently that the government will put forward proposals for a transferable tax allowance for married couples and civil partners "shortly". This could be as soon as the Autumn...
The government’s department for Business, Innovation & Skills has confirmed that it will look at zero hours contracts, due to concern about their misuse by some employers...
The Law Society recently announced that it would create an accreditation scheme for firms providing Will-writing, probate and estate administration services in order to differentiate solicitors from other providers...
It has been reported that many women fall into debt due to banks refusing to stop ex-husbands raiding joint accounts...
If you buy a property with someone else be it husband, wife, partner, friend or family member, it is important to ensure your intentions as to the co-ownership are clear to avoid possible difficulties in the future...
Our clients were buying a freehold property with a mortgage. The house was located on a private road which we discovered was not an adopted highway and had not been registered at HM Land Registry. Because of this, our clients had no legal right of way over..
It has been reported recently that an Air New Zealand flight attendant who had been dismissed has been forced to hand over her bank records and Facebook pages to bosses in a row over sick leave...
A recent survey by law firm Slater & Gordon has found that over a quarter of mothers in the UK feel discriminated against at work. Of 1,975 women surveyed...
The Office for National Statistics has revealed figures that show the number of divorces among those over 60 is rising. The trend began in the 1990s and contrasts with falling divorce rates for all other age groups.
An employment tribunal is considering the case of a female lawyer who was made redundant from her £100,000-a-year job when she asked to extend her six-month maternity leave due to suffering complications giving birth...
By the time she died in 2011 at age 104, the daughter of America’s second-richest man, Huguette Clark had lived as a recluse for more than half a century, spending her last 20 years confined to a New York hospital room...
Outlining the importance of fathers being involved in their children’s lives, a judge has ruled that a vegetarian mother who stopped her son from seeing his father for reasons which included a fear he might feed him meat must let him see the child or risk the Judge ordering that the child should live with his father...
A new study has found that lack of supply and growth in London has driven up the national average house price by 0.5% for the second month in a row...
Lib Dem peer Lord Marks has introduced a new cohabitation bill, following calls from lawyers and campaign groups for laws that give the growing number of people who live together specific rights...
Under current legislation, children and cohabitees who find themselves excluded in someone’s will are unable to contest it if the deceased didn’t live in England or Wales...
New research suggests that nearly two thirds of women have been the victim of inappropriate behaviour from a male work colleague, with 21% of those classing the behaviour as persistent...
New research commissioned by the London Central Portfolio shows that the jump to 3% Stamp Duty on property purchases over £250,000 is having a ‘devastating’ effect on the market...
The Relationships Alliance, a new group of politicians and charities, is warning that relationship breakdown will cost the UK economy almost £50bn this year. It says the disintegration of romantic, social and family relationships costs the average taxpayer around £1,500 per year...
Following a theme addressed in popular ITV drama Downton Abbey recently, The Law Society is advising the public about the importance of writing a will...
A Pagan witch has won a religious discrimination case and has been awarded more than £15,000 in what is believed to be the first successful claim of its kind in Britain...
A new study has shown that one in eight divorced or separated fathers has lost all contact with their children. It is thought that almost a million men in the UK have dependent children that don’t live with them, with almost 130,000 of these having no contact with them at all...
The first recommendations in response to Iain Duncan-Smith’s Family Stability Review, launched to gather ideas on how to keep families together, have now been published...
Following comments from Chancellor George Osborne that the country can ‘now afford’ to raise the National Minimum Wage, the government is cracking down on employers who break the law by failing to pay staff the legal minimum, currently £6.31 per hour for workers over 21...
The Supreme Court has ruled that disputed Wills should be interpreted using the same rules at those that apply to the interpretation of contracts. The judgment was made in a case involving mirror Wills, where the husband and wife had signed each other’s Wills by mistake...
English Heritage, the body responsible for around 400 historical sites across the country, has accepted a Crown Censure for safety failings after a young boy was injured when a glass floor panel broke at Yarmouth Castle on the Isle of Wight...
An analysis of official divorce figures between 1971 and 2011 has shown an increase in the number of divorces where women have 'behaved unreasonably'. Separations for this reason have risen dramatically over the last forty years, potentially because of women's increasing financial independence leading to a greater willingness to assert themselves...
There has been a lot of news coverage about the Government Help to Buy Scheme recently. The Scheme is designed to help people who cannot afford large deposits to get on to the property ladder. This in turn keeps the property market moving...
The Law Society has issued controversial guidance to solicitors which may mean they are able to write “Sharia compliant” Islamic wills that deny women an equal share of inheritances and exclude unbelievers altogether...
Employees who are working illegally, e.g. without a necessary work permit or without paying tax, cannot bring unfair dismissal claims if their employment is terminated. However, a recent case shows that the position is different in relation to discrimination claims...
Figures released recently show that battles in Court where an executor of a Will is accused of mishandling an estate have multiplied threefold in the past 12 months...
Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna has said that the next Labour Government will scrap the Government’s employment tribunal system and replace it with a fairer one that doesn’t deter employees who have been treated unfairly at work from making a claim...
Alison Sharland, who claims her former husband cheated her out of millions in their divorce settlement, has now been given permission to appeal against the Court of Appeal’s decision to uphold the original sum...
An employment tribunal has ruled that a deputy head teacher who was sacked after giving former pupils a tour of her school building was unfairly dismissed...
As property lawyers there’s nothing better than acting for a seller or buyer whose property does not bring up any ‘issues.’ These ‘issues’ can arise from search results e.g. the environmental report carried out by a buyer comes back as adverse, the local authority search reveals the passageway to the rear of the property is private, or from a check of the deeds...
A high court judge has rejected an attempt by hedge fund tycoon Sir Christopher Hohn to impose a blanket ban on reporting his multi-million pound divorce case...
Business Secretary Vince Cable has today announced plans to ban exclusivity clauses which prevent people on zero hours’ contracts from working for more than one employer...
A recent TV series has highlighted the importance of ensuring residential landlords have a watertight tenancy agreement in place...
Eirian Davies, a farmer's daughter who was nicknamed 'the Cowshed Cinderella', has now won the right to a larger share of her parents' farm following a decision by the Court of Appeal...
The new Child Maintenance Service has now begun to replace the Child Support Agency, which is being phased out by the government over the next three years...
A survey just published claims that a third of people struggle to cope at work because of depression, stress or burn out...
Lawson- West has been successfully reaccredited as a member of the Law Society's Conveyancing Quality Scheme – dubbed ‘the mark of excellence for the home buying process’...
Trade unions and employment law experts together are calling for a review of tribunal fees as new figures show a 70% drop in the number of cases taken to employment tribunal since they were introduced last year...
A study by charity Relate demonstrates that those couples worst affected by the recession are eight times more likely to have seen the breakdown of their relationship than those who were least affected...
A man who swindled his brother out of a share of a £1.5 million inheritance has been found guilty of five counts of fraud...
A ruling at the Employment Appeal Tribunal yesterday means that some five million workers could get extra holiday pay in future...
The parental involvement provision in section 11 of the Children and Families Act 2014 came into force recently, and applies to cases started on or after 22nd October, but not those that were already in progress on that date. Family Justice Minister Simon Hughes says the new law will reinforce the importance of children maintaining a relationship with both their parents following divorce or separation.
Figures released by Rightmove see prices falling as sellers compete to find a buyer during the winter, which is traditionally quieter for the housing market. Prices have fallen by 1.7% this month, taking the average house price to £267,127 following growth of more than 8% over the rest of the year...
Following complaints from clients across the country, the Legal Ombudsman has called on the government to consider making will writing a reserved legal activity. Currently, there is no regulatory body covering will writing and the Ombudsman faced over 1000 wills and probate related claims in 2013...
