Inheritance Act Claims Hardcover – 22 Sept. 2017

PROBLEMS WITH WILLS?READ ROSS – NOW IN A NEW FOURTH EDITION FROM SWEET & MAXWELLAn appreciation by Elizabeth Robson Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers and Phillip Taylor MBE, Head of Chambersand Reviews Editor, “The Barrister”Long-established over more than twenty-four years, this now classic and authoritative legal text by Sidney Ross is now available from Sweet & Maxwell in a new fourth edition, which incorporates all significant developments in this challenging area of law since the previous edition of 2011.Writing in the Foreword, Henderson LJ pays tribute to the book as ‘an invaluable companion and resource, not least for its very full and user-friendly treatment of the case law’ which has evolved in a ‘steady stream’ over the last four decades.Fundamentally, the book, as the author describes it, is about claims under the Inheritance (Provisions for Family and Dependants Act 1975 (“the 1975 Act”)’. ‘Its scope must extend to the other types of claim’, he adds, ‘which may arise on the death of the person out of whose estate financial provision is claimed under the Act.’This area of law certainly reveals an especially conspicuous complexity as evidenced in the recent amendments to the 1975 Act, for example -- and the myriad complications of multiple claims, numerous instances of which are introduced in Chapter 1, entitled ‘What Claims may be Made on Death’ The chapter ends notably, with a section on ‘To Do and Not To Do’ which like much of the book, combines fascinating and necessary cautions with practical advice.A striking feature of claims under the 1975 Act, says Lord Justice Henderson, is ‘the way in which they require the skills of an expert family lawyer, sometimes the skills of a Chancery practitioner and not infrequently a combination of both.’ It is for this reason, he adds, that claims under the Act may be brought in either the Chancery (recently re-named ‘Business and Property) or the Family Division. Here then is an area where Chancery and family law, in many cases, are inextricably linked.If anything should convince you to get this book into your professional library it’s the vast repository of research resources it contains, particularly the six appendices, the first of which is the 1975 Act. The five following include inheritance rights for cohabitants…rules orders and form…questionnaires… and important cases… followedby over 160 pages of case summaries in Appendix 6. These last are an important and useful feature in that they contain references and case notes referring to specific cases grouped in thirteen sections by subject. Also note the four tables at the front, of abbreviations, cases, statutes, and statutory instruments.For Chancery practitioners and family lawyers alike, (and indeed all practitioners) this meticulously updated new edition of Ross is an essential work of reference. Fortuitously, this hardback book also includes the Supreme Court judgment on Ilott v. Mitson delivered on 1 March 2017 just prior to its date of publication, which is cited as at 30 June 2017.