Our Blog
When Your Signature Is More Than Just a Formality – The Final Steps in Executing a Will
Considering all the time and expense that can go into creating a reliable will, it’s surprising that people still get the final steps wrong. But failing to stick to these seemingly simple formalities can render your will totally invalid. Firstly, the person who is...
Keep Your Friends Close and Relatives Closer – The Risks of Disinheriting Your Dependants
Unusually for an inheritance dispute, the Ilott v Mitson case caught the attention of the media last week. Whilst contested inheritance claims are not uncommon, the most recent decision by the Court of Appeal has attracted a high level of editorial interest for a...
Inheritance Tax – Good News But Not Quite Yet
On the 8th of July the chancellor announced the much heralded reduction in inheritance tax with these words: ‘The wish to pass something on to your children is about the most basic, human and natural aspiration there is. Inheritance tax was designed to be paid by the...
One Dispute, Two Perspectives – Why Self Delusion Plays an Important Role in Resolving Conflict
It’s remarkable that in a dispute, when two people have experienced exactly the same set of events, their recollection of the part they played can be different. Listen to what they say and neither did anything to cause an issue. Daniel Pinker (Angels of Our Better...
Restoring the Peace – Dealing With the Aftermath of the Disciplinary or Grievance Process
It is a regrettable fact of organisational life that, at one time or another, the actions of an employee will lead to the use of your discipline or grievance processes. But managing these as effective procedures is only half the challenge. What frequently follows,...
How to Avoid Your Valuable Employees Being Poached By Competitors
In the last blog ‘Damage Limitation – Reducing The Loss When Your Employees Are Poached By Competitors’ my colleague Dave Warren quoted a recent CIPD People Management article ‘Who’s After Your Staff?’ [September 2014] which suggested poaching is an increasingly...
Damage Limitation – Reducing The Loss When Your Employees Are Poached By Competitors
The recent CIPD People Management article ‘Who’s After Your Staff?‘(September 2014) suggests that poaching is an increasingly worrying trend in some sectors. As training and development budgets have been slashed, the poaching of staff has become an increasingly...
Restoring relationships, a neighbourhood mediation example…
Background A housing officer had an ongoing problem with two tenants resulting in a regular weekly complaint phone call into the office from one or other tenant. The situation had deteriorated to such an extent that the neighbours did not speak, got to each other...
Legal Aid For Neighbourhood Dispute Cases?
The Low Commission, reporting on the 9.1.14, recommended that legal aid should be made available for housing disrepair and right to quiet enjoyment cases (http://www.24dash.com/news/housing/). Given the current government's directive to reduce the legal aid fees by...