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 discounts of up to £103,900 in London, and up to £77,900 in the rest of the country. Nearly 200 tenants a day have been registering an interest in buying their …Read More
Court refuses to return abducted child to his mother
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 of her lifestyle problems. The case involved a couple who had married in England and …Read More
Charities benefit as woman’s second will declared invalid
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 involved a woman who first made a will in 1982 in which most of her …Read More
Some of the main changes to employment law in 2015
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 should be classed as work time. The same principle applies to the time spent travelling …Read More
Email misusing the name of Bates Solicitors
Law firms continue to be the focus of criminal behaviour with scammers falsely claiming to work for Solicitors as part of sophisticated scheming in attempt to defraud.
The Matthew Elvidge Trust | Fleet Half Marathon 2016
Bates Solicitors are pleased to again sponsor The Matthew Elvidge Trust at the Fleet Half Marathon 2016. The Trust was set up in 2010 by Matthew’s parents and members of the Elvidge family after Matthew took his own life following a short period of depression. Suicide in young men is the single largest cause of death.
Bates Sponsor Concert in aid of Age Concern Hampshire
An exquisite performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons enraptured those who attended the Bates Solicitor sponsored concert on Sunday 15 November 2015.
The Changing Face of Divorce – ’till retirement do us part?
You may be surprised to find out that whilst the divorce rate in England & Wales is declining, the number of divorces for the over 60s is on the rise. A further unexpected statistic* is that in the population as a whole, 34% of divorces are granted to men, whereas in the over 60s this rises to 50%.
The Mirage of Old Age
When we are young, old age seems a distant event and like a mirage, the closer we get to it the further away it seems. However, the reality is that with the passing of years, no matter how young we may feel at heart, we become older and can in time become fragile and vulnerable.
Fraud and Prevention
Type in ‘email fraud’ into the pre-eminent search engine Google and then press enter. Recently on a laptop in UK Google returned ‘About 211,000,000’ results in 0.43 seconds. Two hundred and eleven million results in less than one minute. Internet users have come to expect rapid results and to rely upon and trust the information returned.