Kekwick v Kekwick & anr [2023] WTLR 579

Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Summer 2023 #191

The claimant’s mother settled a trust by way of a trust deed dated 29 April 1985. The trust was originally a discretionary trust with the claimant and his mother as trustees and a wide class of beneficiaries. The only asset of the trust was the family home in Surrey (the property). The trust was a discretionary trust during the claimant’s mother’s lifetime, with an absolute trust in favour of the claimant on her death. By a deed dated 30 June 2008, the first defendant (the claimant’s cousin) and the second defendant (a solicitor) were appointed as trustees.

The claimant’s mother d...

Dixon Coles & Gill v Baines & anr [2021] WTLR 1247

Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Winter 2021 #185

The appellant was a firm of solicitors. The respondents were, respectively, the Bishop and Diocesan Board of Finance of the Diocese of Leeds, into which had been absorbed the Diocese of Wakefield, which in turn had been a client of the appellant firm. The firm had acted for the Diocese in a number of conveyancing transactions during the course of their instructions. It was subsequently discovered by one of the firm’s three partners that another partner, Mrs Box, had over the course of many years made unauthorised payments from the firm’s client account, and had misappropriated millions o...

Burnden Holdings (UK) Ltd v Fielding & anr [2018] WTLR 379

Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Summer 2018 #172

This appeal arose from an application by the defendants for summary judgment, dismissing the claim on the ground that it was statute-barred. The claim was for (and was for the purposes of the application assumed to have been) an unlawful distribution by the claimant company six years and three days before the issue of the claim form. Although, by the time of the hearing but after permission had been given to appeal, the claimant had amended its claim to include an allegation of fraud, so that there could not be summary judgment, the court considered the issue as to the meaning of s23...