News

Second ‘wife’ establishes claim against bigamist’s estate The England and Wales High Court is gradually disentangling the case of the late James Dinsdale, who died intestate in 2020 leaving a GBP1.8 million estate. He had a legal wife and a second wife whom he had bigamously married in America without divorcing the first. The second...

Fiduciary’s dishonest profits are held in trust for beneficiary, says UKSC Profit received by a trustee or other fiduciary resulting from breach of trust or fiduciary duty is held by the fiduciary in a true trust for the benefit of the beneficiary or principal, the UK Supreme Court (UKSC) has decided (Stevens v Hotel Portfolio II, 2025...

Suspended jail sentence for charity director who refused to disclose use of funds Westminster Magistrates Court has given a charity director a suspended ten-week prison sentence for failing to provide information to the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) contrary to the Counter-Terrorism (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. The UK government has already frozen all the...

Investors’ relief not available where business not ready to supply goods An enterprise investment scheme (EIS) relief claim made by a group of six companies has failed at the First-tier Tax Tribunal (FTT) because the companies concerned had not commenced qualifying trades inside the two-year deadline. The FTT’s criterion for commencement was ‘when the business...

The so-called ‘digital challenger bank’ Monzo, which offers personal current accounts through smartphone apps without using a branch network, has been fined GBP21 million for having inadequate anti-financial crime systems and anti-money laundering controls between October 2018 and August 2020. The bank’s customer base had substantially The number of increased during the period, and it...

The England and Wales Family Court has concluded that a trust set up by London property developer Mario Michael was a sham, intended to shield significant assets which should have formed part of the total matrimonial assets to be shared on divorce. It decided that Michael controlled the trust assets at his sole discretion, and...

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has agreed to drop its ban on the sale of crypto exchange-traded notes (cETNs) to retail consumers, provided they are sold on an FCA-approved UK-based investment exchange subject to financial promotion rules. The cETNs, which are debt instruments offering price exposure to crypto-assets such as Bitcoin and Ether, will not...

Jenny Halliwell has been ordered to pay £ 670,000 in indemnity costs to her ex-husband, Simon Entwistle, due to the deliberate non-disclosure of her assets in their financial remedy dispute. Part of the sum is repayment of GBP 75,000 costs awarded against Entwistle by the England and Wales High Court (Helliwell v Entwistle, 2025 EWCA Civ 1071)....

The England and Wales High Court (EWHC) has ordered the tenant of a London property to pay GBP851,000 in rent to his landlord, despite the tenant’s claim that payment would be illegal because the landlord is a designated person under the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. The EWHC agreed that, while regulations 12 and...

The amount of inheritance tax (IHT) collected by HMRC continues to rise rapidly, reaching £ 6.7 billion in the 2022/23 tax year, some 12 percent higher than the 2021/22 figure. One in every 21 deaths resulted in an IHT charge, equal to the previous high of 2016/17 before the residential nil-rate band was introduced. The...