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Divorce 'Blame Game' to end

 Divorcing couples may no longer have to blame one another for the breakdown of their marriage as a Bill that seeks to reduce family conflict proceeds through Parliament.

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Divorce & Separation 

What is Conveyancing?

Conveyancing is the legal and administrative process carried out when a house or flat is purchased or sold.

Upon instructing a solicitor to act on your behalf, there will be various anti-money laundering and identity checks to be carried out before any work can be carried out. Once these compliance checks have been carried out, the conveyancing process begins.

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Residential Property 

GDPR - Data Subject Access Requests

 Would your organisation know what to do if, and when, it receives a Data Subject Access Request (“DSAR”) and are your staff trained to recognise a DSAR when one is made?

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GDPR  Litigation & Dispute Resolution 

Data Protection

The Information Commissioner’s Office has recently issued new guidelines on calculating the period within which data controllers must comply with a  subject access request. 

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Litigation & Dispute Resolution  GDPR 

Ending Assured Shorthold Tenancies

Despite its title the Deregulation Act has introduced greater regulation into the residential letting market. Typically a landlord when granting an AST to a tenant would at the same time serve on the tenant a section 21 notice enabling the landlord to take back possession at the end of the tenancy. The law now says that a valid section 21 notice cannot be served within the first 4 months of the tenancy and, once served, the landlord must act on it within 6 months or serve a fresh section 21 notice.

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Litigation & Dispute Resolution 

Wills for Unmarried Couples

The most obvious problem that unmarried couples face when making Wills is that spouse exemption for Inheritance Tax (IHT) purposes will not apply on the first death in the way that it would for a married couple or civil partners.  Instead the only allowance that will be available on first death is the individual IHT Nil Rate band (currently £325,000).  The value of any assets in excess of that amount will be chargeable to IHT at the rate of 40% subject to any reliefs that might be claimed for business or agricultural assets eg shares in a trading business or agricultural land.

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Wills, Probate & Taxation 

Resolving Disputes

Most people are familiar with the term litigation which involves two or more parties asking a judge to determine the outcome of their dispute. It is however the case that litigation is not only lengthy and costly but the outcome is often unpredictable. Litigants hand control of their dispute to the court which dictates the pace of the litigation, the evidence that each side is permitted to rely upon and the amount of legal costs that the successful litigant can recover from the other party which, invariably, is substantially less than the actual legal costs incurred.

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Litigation & Dispute Resolution