What is mediation? When couples separate, emotions can often hinder difficult issues being discussed. Mediation is a process that is designed to help people reach an early agreement, with the minimum of cost, delay and confrontation. It can ease the pain of a family breakdown or separation, encourages people to be open and discuss
The government has introduced a series of new measures to help more people buy their first home. One of the main changes will reduce the restrictions on who can buy a home through shared ownership. Shared ownership is a scheme that allows people to move into a home by simply buying a share of it
An 83-year-old shop assistant who was sacked for leaving his till open while he dealt with a customer has won his claim of unfair dismissal. Ivor Smith had worked for B&Q in Glasgow for 12 years. In August 2014, a customer asked him for change of £200 in coins. He left his till open for
A woman’s second will in which she declared that she wanted to leave most of her estate to a close friend has been declared invalid because it wasn’t properly executed. It means that a number of charities will now inherit even though it’s unlikely that she wanted her money to pass to them. The case
A court has refused to return an abducted child to his mother even though he was taken illegally by his father. The court accepted that it was against the boy’s interests to be sent back to his mother and that he had made it clear that he did not want to live with her because
Thousands of tenants have been registering to buy their homes over the last few months. It follows the government announcement that 1.3 million housing association tenants should qualify for the Right to Buy scheme, which had previously only been available to people in council owned properties. The scheme allows tenants to buy their homes at
Marks & Spencer has lost its appeal against a court decision that it was not entitled to a refund after exercising a release clause in a commercial property lease. The case involved four floors of office space at The Point in London. M&S had a commercial lease which was due to expire in 2018. The
There were several important developments in employment law in 2015. These are some of the most significant. Travel time can be ‘work time’ The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that if employees don’t have a fixed place of work then the time they spend travelling from home to their first job of the day
Children want more say in what happens to them when their parents get divorced, according to research carried out for the family law group, Resolution. The survey also revealed that 82% said they would prefer that their parents separated if they were unhappy rather than stay together. Resolution quotes one young person as saying: “Don’t
A university has won its appeal against a decision that it discriminated against a disabled employee when calculating his pension rights. The case involved an employee at Swansea University who had to retire due to ill health at the age of 38. His hours had been reduced gradually over several years to accommodate the effects