Guest & anr v Guest [2023] WTLR 431
Summer 2023 #191A father made repeated promises to his son that he would inherit an undefined part of a farm, sufficient to enable him to operate a viable farming business on it, after the death of his parents. Relying on that promise, the son spent the best part of his working life on the farm, working at very low wages and accommodated in a farm cottage. After a deterioration in the relationship between the father and son, it proved no longer possible for the two to work together, and the son therefore moved out, and the father cut him out of his will.
The son claimed an interest in the farm as...
Rittson-Thomas & ors v Oxfordshire County Council [2021] WTLR 679
Summer 2021 #183The appeal concerned Nettlebed School in Oxfordshire. In 1914 and 1928, Mr Robert Fleming conveyed land to Oxfordshire County Council (the council) under the School Sites Act 1841 (SSA 1841). The benefactions enabled a new school building to be built. The school operated on the site until 2006. In the 1990s, the council decided to relocate the school to a new building with improved facilities on other land owned by the council (adjacent to the old site), and the pupils moved to the new building in February 2006. The council’s plan was to sell the old site to pay o...
Commissioners for HMRC v Parry & ors [2020] WTLR 1151
Winter 2020 #181The appellants were the three executors of Mrs Staveley’s estate, two of whom were also her sons. Mrs Staveley held a pension scheme on which she had decided never to draw, with the aim of maximising the death benefit that would accrue to her sons under the scheme. Under the terms of her will, her estate was to be held on trust for her two sons in equal shares. Shortly prior to her death Mrs Staveley had transferred funds from her existing pension scheme into a new personal pension plan (PPP). The motives out of which she had done so were contested between the parties, the appellants all...
Lehtimäki & ors v Cooper [2020] WTLR 967
Autumn 2020 #180H and C were two directors and trustees of a charitable company limited by guarantee. They, together with L, were the members of the company. In July 2015 H and C agreed that, subject to the approval of the Charity Commission or the court, C would resign as a director and member of the company and the company would make a grant of $360m to a charity founded by C.
Companies Act 2006, s217 provides that:
‘A company may not make a payment for loss of office to a director of the company unless the payment has been approved by a resolution of the members of ...
Routier & anr v HMRC [2020] WTLR 281
Spring 2020 #178C died in 2007 in Jersey, leaving her residuary estate on trust (the trust) for purposes that were agreed to have been exclusively charitable under English law. C directed in her will that the proper law of the trust was the law of Jersey. The appellants, who were domiciled in Jersey, were appointed to be C’s executors and the trustees of the trust. C’s estate included assets in the United Kingdom amounting to £1.7m. In 2010 the appellants retired as trustees (but not as executors) and were replaced by a UK resident trustee. C’s will was then amended so as to make the proper law of the T...
Burnden Holdings (UK) Ltd v Fielding & anr [2018] WTLR 379
Summer 2018 #172This 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...
Rangers v Advocate General for Scotland [2017] WTLR 1093
Autumn 2017 #169The appeal concerned a tax avoidance scheme by which employers paid remuneration to their employees through an employees’ remuneration trust in the hope that the scheme would avoid liability to income tax and Class 1 national insurance contributions. The question on appeal was whether an employee’s remuneration was taxable as their emoluments or earnings when it was paid to a third party in circumstances in which the employee had no prior entitlement to receive it himself or herself.
The employing companies, including RFC, operated the tax avoidance scheme in the tax years between...
Ilott v The Blue Cross & ors [2017] WTLR 533
Summer 2017 #168The testatrix (T) died in 2004 leaving an adult daughter (C) from whom she had been estranged for 26 years. C had left home aged 17 to live with her boyfriend (B), of whom T disapproved. B later became C’s husband and they had five children. At the time of T’s death, C and her family lived in straitened financial circumstances: they lived in a house rented from a housing association, were reliant on benefits save for the husband’s intermittent work as a supporting actor and could not afford new household equipment or family holidays.
During the lifelong estrangement there had been...