HB 121 Solicitors

  Stealing houses! This subject keeps catching the media’s, and programme maker’s, eye and makes a good story. But it has a grounding in truth. There have been a few cases (well known to conveyancers and one of the reasons we now have to ask so many questions and have so much information about your I/d) where examples of this have occurred. Sometimes HM Land Registry, who are getting better at spotting fraudulent transactions, or a conveyancer suspect something is wrong and stop the transaction time. But even then someone may well have lost out such as where a transaction goes through but is not registered- there the purchaser, and possibly their lender, will lose out unless the money is claimed back - and you can bet the fraudulent seller will be off the scene by then, probably with someone else’s money! These are usually high value transactions but a recent one was for £131,000 - apparently an arrest in that case has recently been made which may help shed some more light on criminal’

  Divorce – New Year! It is no secret that January can be a busy month in Family law with statistically higher divorce Applications. Whether 2022 will see that being the case, remains to be seen but what can be seen, is a new way of proceeding.   From 6th April 2022 the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020 takes effect. This means that couples in a marriage or civil partnership who wish to bring it to an end can do so without having to wait two years, if they do not wish to blame the other. This No Fault divorce has been in the legal background for a couple of years with key family law groups and Resolutions lobbying the government. There has been resistance to introducing this legislation as there was concern that it would be too ‘easy’ to end marriages or civil partnerships and that it would increase the UK divorce law firm rate further. However, trying to find blame when there is not or waiting two years to start divorce proceedings can make an already difficult time more