Author: Wellers

Many families whose loved ones are in hospital on life support understandably cling to the hope that they will in time recover. As a High Court ruling showed, however, where such hopes run contrary to the weight of expert medical evidence, judges have the unenviable task of deciding where a patient’s best interests lie.

The case concerned a young father-of-two who sustained catastrophic brain and spinal injuries when a car in which he was travelling hit a tree. He had since been tended to round-the-clock in a hospital intensive care unit where he was entirely dependent on artificial ventilation, nutrition and hydration.

Speaking with one voice, medical professionals involved in his care were convinced that he was in a persistent vegetative state and that prolonging his treatment would merely result in the continuation of a life of which he had no awareness. Their views prompted the relevant NHS trust to seek the Court’s authorisation to cease his life-sustaining treatment.

Members of his family, however, took a different view. They had observed what they believed to be signs of awareness in the form of him opening his eyes and moving his head in response to requests. They felt strongly that he would have wanted his life to be sustained and that he should be given more time to recover. The Official Solicitor, who represented his interests in court, described it as a finely balanced case.

Ruling on the matter, the Court praised members of the family, who had conducted themselves with enormous dignity in a desperately sad case. There was a strong legal presumption in favour of life being sustained; his condition was in some respects relatively stable and his survival to date had defied medical predictions. There was no direct evidence that he was experiencing any pain.

His apparent responses to stimuli had understandably given his family hope. In the light of the unanimous medical evidence, however, the Court found that they were spontaneous and reflexive movements which were consistent with a persistent vegetative state and did not indicate any level of consciousness.

In granting the trust’s application with profound regret, the Court found that, in the light of his lack of awareness and bleak medical prognosis, prolonging life-sustaining treatment would bring him no benefit. Withdrawal of such treatment was, therefore, in his best interests.

Many householders are familiar with the often traumatic experience of falling out with builders. However, as a High Court case showed, if their work is not up to scratch or left unfinished, litigation lawyers will bend every sinew to ensure that fair compensation is paid.

A homeowner engaged builders to perform major construction works on her property, including the erection of a kitchen extension and bathroom refurbishment. She also commissioned the manufacture and installation of triple-glazed windows, bi-fold doors and other glazing works.

After she launched proceedings, it was common ground that the works carried out were defective and left incomplete. Following a trial, the builder who bore responsibility for the construction works was ordered to pay her £34,711 in damages. She was also awarded £9,778 against his company in respect of the glazing works.

The judge rejected defence arguments that the homeowner was responsible for all that went wrong with the project because she permitted a friend to act as de facto project manager, a task for which she was said to lack the necessary experience, and failed to consult an architect or engineer when required. He found that the defective construction works arose from the builder’s own shortcomings.

The builder’s contention that she had contracted solely with his company, which had since ceased to trade, also fell on fallow ground. The judge found that, in dealing directly with the homeowner, he was not acting on his company’s behalf. He thus bore personal contractual responsibility for the construction works.

The homeowner further succeeded in arguments that, as the builder was not registered for VAT, the construction works were not subject to the 20 per cent levy. Save in respect of the bathroom refurbishment, the judge also found that the quoted contract price included both labour and materials.

In refusing to grant the builder and his company permission to appeal against that outcome, the Court found that any such appeal would stand no real prospect of success. The judge’s factual conclusions on the various issues in the case were amply justified. An award to the homeowner of £70,000 in interim legal costs was also confirmed.

Judges frequently impress on divorcing couples that it is in their own best interests to put conflict behind them and focus on achieving a sensible resolution. However, as a case in which a couple spent £8.4 million fighting over money and their children’s future showed, such blandishments all too often fall on deaf ears.

The very wealthy couple enjoyed an exceptionally lavish international lifestyle during their long marriage, which yielded four children. The marriage came to an end when the husband unilaterally divorced the wife in a foreign land where she would have been entitled to no financial provision from him.

However, given her connections to the UK – amongst other things, she was born and had spent her formative years in this country, and was currently based here – the High Court accepted jurisdiction to consider her claim for financial relief under Part III of the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984.

Ruling on the matter, the Court found that financial resources available to them and readily accessible in the UK were worth at least £70 million. Given her contribution to the marriage as mother and carer, the Court effected a clean break by awarding her a lump sum of £27,415,000. That, the Court found, would be sufficient to meet her income, property and other needs.

The Court observed that the culture of conflict that had grown up between them had been thoroughly unhelpful in resolving the matter. At every opportunity, the Court had urged them to take a more constructive and less combative approach, but to little or no appreciable effect. They had both expressed horror at having run up £4 million in legal bills. In addition, they had spent £4.4 million on proceedings concerning the children.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) adopts a tough approach when considering whether a person who claims non-resident tax status has spent more than the permitted number of days in the UK. It certainly brooked no compromise in the case of a woman who ended up with a seven-figure tax bill.

The day before the end of a tax year, the woman moved to Ireland. In the following tax year, her husband transferred shares to her on which she received about £8 million in dividends. HMRC rejected her claim to non-resident tax status and assessed her for £3,142,550 in additional tax.

She accepted that she had spent 50 nights in the UK during the relevant tax year –five nights more than the 45 nights permitted under the statutory residence test (SRT) contained in the Finance Act 2013. She asserted, however, that there were exceptional circumstances, beyond her control, which prevented her from leaving the UK on the excess nights in question.

Allowing her appeal against the tax demand, the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) found that she had twice returned to the UK to visit her sister, who was suffering from alcohol addiction and depression. Whilst not accepting that her visits were prompted by her sister’s threats of suicide, the FTT found that she needed to be in the UK to look after her sister’s children until alternative care arrangements could be made.

In upholding HMRC’s challenge to that outcome, however, the Upper Tribunal (UT) found that the FTT erred in law in finding that she was ‘prevented’ from leaving the UK. It noted that the word ‘prevent’ means stopping something from happening, or making an intended act impossible, and connotes more than a mere hindrance.

In finding that exceptional circumstances applied, the FTT reached conclusions on the evidence that were inconsistent, and thus perverse. It further erred in failing to consider whether all elements of the SRT were met on each of the five excess nights, taken individually.

The UT acknowledged that the woman may have felt morally bound to remain in the UK to care for her sister’s children. However, it found on the evidence that any such sense of moral obligation did not amount to exceptional circumstances preventing her from leaving the UK. In upholding the tax demand, the UT ruled that she was resident in the UK during the relevant tax year.

It is quite common for people to get married in the knowledge that they only have a short while to live. However, as a High Court ruling underlined, such a step is often fraught with legal difficulty in terms of inheritance and should never be taken without legal advice.

The case concerned a woman who was fully aware that she was terminally ill. Her assets in England and abroad were worth about £10 million. She was being cared for in a hospice when, a few days prior to her death, she made a will with the help of a priest and a man who was described on her admission papers as her close friend and next of kin. She executed the document without having received professional legal advice from a solicitor.

By the will, she left around one sixth of her estate to the friend, bequeathing most of the balance to her sister and members of her family. However, on the same day that she signed the document, she and the friend were married in a religious ceremony. That was followed soon afterwards by a civil ceremony at which her sister served as a witness. Three days later, she died.

The friend subsequently launched proceedings, asserting that the marriage had the effect of revoking the will and that she therefore died intestate. As her husband and next of kin, he asserted that he was thus entitled to inherit the entirety of her estate. His claim was resisted by the sister, but he applied for summary judgment on the basis that her defence had no real prospect of succeeding.

Ruling on the matter, the Court noted the general rule contained in Section 18 of the Wills Act 1837 that, when a couple get married, any previous wills either of them have made are automatically revoked. That provision does not require them to have any intention to revoke their wills or even to be aware of the rule’s existence.

In rejecting the friend’s application, however, the Court found that the sister had a real prospect of establishing that the woman made her will in anticipation of her forthcoming marriage. If it could be shown that she intended her will to survive her nuptials, an exception to the general rule would apply. Some, but not all, other aspects of the sister’s defence were also viable and the Court found that the matter could only be resolved fairly following a full trial on the merits.

Please do get in contact if you have any form of inheritance dispute.

Making a valid will requires an exercise of independent decision-making, free from the undue influence of others. The High Court powerfully made that point in finding that a daughter coerced her ailing mother into bequeathing everything to her.

The mother was aged 82 when she made her one and only will, leaving her home and everything else she owned to one of her four daughters. She had by then been diagnosed with dementia and had suffered a suspected stroke. She died three months after signing the document. A legal challenge to the will’s validity was later brought by two of her disinherited daughters and four of her grandchildren.

Ruling on the matter, the Court noted that the circumstances were suspicious. No solicitor was involved in the preparation and execution of the will and the mother was not medically examined at the time. The Court was not, however, satisfied on the evidence either that she lacked the mental capacity required to make a valid will or that she did not know and approve of the document’s contents.

In nevertheless ruling the will invalid, the Court found that the facts pointed inevitably to a conclusion that the daughter who became her sole beneficiary had coerced her into making it. She may have believed that she was simply persuading her mother to do the right thing, but the undue influence that she brought to bear went far beyond persuasion.

The mother was very vulnerable, both physically and mentally, when she signed the will. She had been devastated by the recent death of one of her daughters and was probably still grieving deeply. After moving in with her, the daughter who benefited under the will had taken steps to isolate her from other members of the family. The daughter’s assertion that she had nothing to do with making the will was inherently unlikely.

The Court found that the mother signed the will not as a free agent but because her volition had been overcome by her daughter’s undue influence. The decision meant that she died without making a valid will and that her estate would be distributed amongst her next of kin in accordance with intestacy rules.

If you have concerns about undue influence or the validity of a will, please do contact us, we have specialist, experienced lawyers who can advise you.