Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Winter 2019 #177The Applicant, who was the sole deputy for property and affairs of his brother MJL, made an application for
(i) ratification of small gifts previously made on behalf of MJL and
(ii) authority to make prospective substantial gifts on behalf of MJL.
Both he and three siblings each provided witness statements in support. MJL, who was in his sixties, was unmarried and had no children. He had suffered a cardiac arrest ten years previously and was in a persistent vegetative state. His estate was in excess of £17m (the larger proportion of which was comprised in an investme...
Timothy Sherwin considers tax-efficient planning for attorneys under lasting powers of attorney ‘The starting point for assessing the reasonableness of any gift is that attorneys are in a fiduciary position in respect of P, and so must act in a manner appropriate to a fiduciary, including by avoiding self-dealing and conflicts of interest.’ Attorneys under …
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Autumn 2018 #173
JMA, who was aged 72 years, suffered from early onset dementia and lived in a care home which she paid for privately. She no longer had the capacity to take decisions about making gifts and the medical evidence suggested that she would only live for a further 3 to 5 years. The applicant was a son by her first marriage; her daughter having died in January 2009. JMA inherited from her last husband, who died in January 2010, his entire estate which was derived from the sale of businesses which had realised approximately £11m. The applicant was appointed sole attorney under a L...
Denzil Lush makes the case for the return of substituted judgment ‘Exercising substituted judgment – whereby I sought to stand in the testator‘s shoes and authorise the execution of the will that they would make, if they had testamentary capacity – seemed a more realistic, relevant and reverential process than my experiences under the Mental …
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Ruth Hughes explores the notion of ‘doing the right thing’ in a will ‘In the absence of evidence to the contrary the court was entitled to assume that P would want to put their affairs in order by making a will and that they would want to do the right thing and not leave their …
Continue reading "Wills: The prodigal daughter?"
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | May 2016 #159Mr Jones suffered from dementia and lacked testamentary capacity and capacity to make significant lifetime gifts. He had an estate of approximately £2.3m and was intestate. The effect of his dying intestate would be that, following the statutory legacy of £250,000 plus personal chattels to his wife, Mrs Jones, outright, Mrs Jones would receive half of the remainder of the estate absolutely and his daughter from a previous relationship, Ms Dawson, would receive the other half of the estate.
Ms Dawson’s mother and Mr Jones had separated when she was a child whereupon Ms Dawson...
Wills & Trusts Law Reports | April 2016 #158A, who was 18 years old, had received £5,000,000 in settlement of a claim for clinical negligence which had left her with cerebral palsy, epilepsy, cortical blindness, severe intellectual impairment and extreme behavioural problems. She lived at home with her parents and siblings. A professional with 25 years’ experience, David Ross of Simpson Millar, Solicitors, was appointed by the Court of Protection as deputy for her property and affairs. B, who was A’s brother, had not progressed at primary school as well as he could have during the build up to the trial in the High Cour...
Zahra Kanani looks at the lessons to be learned from NHS Foundation Trust v Mrs X [2014], which marks a shift in the court’s attitude to ‘the right to life’ ‘The decision-maker must look at the welfare of the individual concerned in the widest sense; the decision-maker should take into account not just medical factors …
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | September 2014 #142Mr Jones, the property and affairs deputy for Gladys Meek, asked for the court to authorise a statutory will leaving everything between National Trust for Scotland and a charity connected with the Christadelphian Church. He also asked for an order calling in the £275,000 security bond against her two former deputies, Mrs Miller and Mrs Johnson, and a direction as to whether he should refer the conduct of the two former deputies to the police.
Mrs Meek was born in 1919, widowed in 1961 and predeceased by her only child Barbara in 2010. Both her husband and Barbara died intestate an...
