A woman has established her legal right to have contact with her niece who lives abroad with her father. The court heard that the girl’s mother, who was English, had met the father while visiting Corfu. She moved there to live with him and they were married. The girl was born in 2007. The marriage
A disinherited son has failed to prove that his father didn’t understand what he was doing in the final weeks of his life and his will should therefore be declared invalid. The High Court heard that the father had originally made a will in 2008 that divided his estate between his son and his daughter.
A bike courier with the delivery service City Sprint has won the right to be classed as a worker rather than as self-employed. Maggie Dewhirst, from London, worked for the firm for two years making healthcare deliveries. She is one of the growing number of people in the so called gig economy, being paid on
The directors of 11 different companies across the UK have been disqualified after employing illegal workers. The disqualifications all follow investigations by the Insolvency Service. The businesses include four restaurants, three butchers, a café, a clothing manufacturer and a petrol station. The 11 directors have each been banned from being company directors or being involved
The government has announced plans to provide £7 billion to expand its affordable housing programme. Housing providers can now apply for a share of the fund, which was allocated an additional £1.4 billion in the Autumn Statement, to deliver 40,000 new affordable houses across the country. Alongside this extra funding, the government is expanding the
A judge was justified in committing a husband to prison for six weeks for breaching the child maintenance requirements set out in a divorce settlement. That was the decision of the Court of Appeal in the case of a couple who had divorced in 2013. The consent order provided for the couple’s properties in Monaco
A husband who failed to disclose all his assets when negotiating a divorce settlement has been ordered to pay his wife an extra £1.6m. The couple were both teachers when they married in 1984. The husband began a business in 1988. He owned 99 of the 100 shares and his wife had the other one.
There is often confusion between the rights and responsibilities afforded to married couples as opposed to unmarried couples, with many unmarried couples still believing in the myth of the “common law spouse” and the misapprehension that they have the same rights as a spouse. One of the differences between married and unmarried couples is in
Employers have had to pay out more than £83,000 under the tribunal penalty regime that came into force last year. Firms now face penalties of up to £5,000 for non-payment of tribunal awards under the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act. The regime applies to judgments made on or after 6 April, 2016. The Department
The government says it wants to provide mothers and pregnant women with better protection against the threat of redundancy. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is to hold a public consultation on the issue and consider new ways to ensure women are not subjected to discrimination at work. It follows a report by