Alan Fowler reviews recent cases on missing beneficiaries, pension loss, changes to schemes, the distribution of lump sum death benefits and death in service arrangements
The Court of Appeal has given clear guidance as to how judges should approach applications for interim payments, but the guidelines must be carefully applied in line with the particular facts of a case, says David Oldham
Fixed success fees bare no relation to practitioners' assessments of the overall risks in asbestos disease claims and should be removed to protect claimants' access to justice, says Andrew Morgan
Further rules intended to promote greater transparency in the workings of the family courts may be detrimental to the administration of justice, argues David Lister
Mixed practices that have kept private client work, once seen as unfashionable, at the core of their strategy, have proved that this can be a wise long-term investment and a resilient model. Jean-Yves Gilg reports
Richmond in North Yorkshire was an oasis of calm in an otherwise full-speed month. A lawyer friend with whom I trained (now a PFI partner in a large national firm) celebrated her 40th birthday with a girls' weekend away. We stayed in funky modern log cabins, indulged in beauty treatments and walks in the crisp fresh air and ate at a gastro pub in a nearby village as the main event. Our accommodation came with an organic food and drink hamper stuffed with goodies such as fresh bread and crumbling Wensleydale, not to mention the rather delicious organic wines which are meant to give you less of a hangover if seriously indulged in because of their lack of preservatives. Maybe it's an urban myth started by organic wine producers – but we had four bottles between eight of us anyway, so I doubt that qualifies as sufficient consumption to test the theory.
The government is to review the use of out-of-court disposals such as cautions and on-the-spot fines following disquiet over reports that they were being used in cases were offenders should be formally charged.
