Family & Estates
Will witnesses are chosen for what they do not receive
The formalities around signing a will exist to guard against fraud and pressure, and the rule keeping…
· 4 min read
Anjali Raghunathan
Staff writer, What's Your Case
Anjali covers consumer, housing, work and the questions readers actually send in and thinks most subjects are more interesting once you know how they work.
15 articles
Courts
The real cost of a small claim is counted in hours
Simplified procedures make the fees modest and the paperwork manageable, but the resource a claimant…
· 4 min read
Courts
Evidence is not the same thing as being right
A civil dispute is decided on what can be shown to a decision-maker, which is why the strongest sense of…
· 4 min read
Courts
The months between starting a claim and standing up in a hearing
A civil claim is a sequence of stages with deadlines attached, and the hearing that people picture occupies…
· 4 min read
Housing
Quiet enjoyment has very little to do with noise
The promise most lettings contain protects the occupier’s use of the property from interference by the…
· 4 min read
Housing
A rent cannot usually be raised just because the market moved
Increasing rent during a letting depends on a mechanism agreed in advance or supplied by local law, and…
· 4 min read
Housing
Subletting and assignment are different acts with different consequences
One creates a fresh tenancy underneath yours and leaves you fully liable; the other tries to hand the whole…
· 3 min read
Work
A grievance procedure decides how, not whether
Internal processes exist to make a decision defensible and consistent rather than to guarantee any…
· 4 min read
Work
Pay that has been earned is harder to claw back than employers assume
Most systems restrict what may be taken out of wages and when, treating pay as the worker’s property rather…
· 3 min read
Work
When a business changes hands, the staff often go with the work
Many systems protect employment when an undertaking is transferred or a service is outsourced, moving…
· 4 min read
Courts
Ignoring a claim is how people lose cases they could have won
Civil procedure treats silence as a decision, and a judgment entered because nobody responded is far harder…
· 4 min read
Housing
Planning permission is not a defence to damaging the house next door
Approval to build addresses the public interest in development, while the obligations owed to an adjoining…
· 4 min read
Work
Working fewer hours is not supposed to mean worse terms
Parity rules for part-time and fixed-term staff work by comparison with someone doing similar work on…
· 4 min read
Family & Estates
A beneficiary who is unhappy with an executor is not challenging the will
Complaints about how an estate is being administered are a different category from complaints about whether…
· 4 min read
Family & Estates
Life events can revoke a will without anybody touching it
A will can be undone deliberately, by destroying it or replacing it, and in many systems automatically by…
· 4 min read