Challen v Challen & anor [2020] WTLR 859

Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Autumn 2020 #180

C and Richard Challen (the deceased) were in a relationship for 40 years and had two children (the defendants). Throughout that period the deceased subjected C to sustained coercive control, leaving her in an abnormal psychiatric state. On 15 August 2010 C killed the deceased with a hammer and was convicted of his murder in 2011. In February 2019 that conviction was quashed and the matter remitted for a retrial, and in June 2019 C was convicted upon a guilty plea of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. Under the common law ‘forfeiture rule’ C was precluded from benefiting...

Purrunsing v A’Court [2016] EWHC 789 (Ch)

Wills & Trusts Law Reports | July/August 2016 #161

The claim arose from a purported sale of a property to the claimant by a fraudster who purported to be, but was not in fact, the registered owner of the property. By the time the fraud was discovered the whole of the purchase price had been paid by the claimant to the second defendant (the claimant’s conveyancer), by the second defendant to the first defendant (the fraudster’s solicitor) and by the first defendant to an account in Dubai upon the fraudster’s instructions.

The fraudster’s instructions to the first defendant were that the property had been given to him by his father,...