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Family law: land grab on the farm?

© Copyright LexisNexis 2025. All Rights Reserved.
24 May 2024 / David Burrows
Issue: 8072 / Categories: Features , Family , Property , Wills & Probate
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David Burrows reflects on the tangled legacies we leave behind
  • How does the court define what is to be paid out where an issue arises between family members as to how family property should be divided up or sold?
  • A family farm owned by parents and a son: who owns the farm on the parents’ death; and how does that affect the rights of other surviving siblings?
  • How much ‘undue influence’ on a parent, and the signing of her will, is needed to make the will invalid?

Cases on the varied circumstances of family breakdown, family partnership and property distribution are relatively rare; then in ten weeks, four cases arrived from the Court of Appeal, all looking at different points. First were Savage v Savage [2024] EWCA Civ 49, [2024] All ER (D) 07 (Feb) and Williams v Williams & ors [2024] EWCA Civ 42, [2024] 4 WLR 10, [2024] All ER (D) 21 (Feb), where judgments were handed down on the same day (1 February

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