Title Research’s educational regional seminars travelled across the UK throughout March. The events geared toward private client solicitors were held in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and Southampton. The agenda for each seminar included lunch, networking and talks from two industry experts, Simon Barber and Martin Holdsworth.
Simon Barber, Technical Manager at Title Research, took to the stage first to speak about the challenges, risks and commercial opportunities in estate administration. Simon also reviewed some interesting case studies in the field of genealogy and asset repatriation.
Following on from Simon was an interactive talk from an award-winning contentious probate solicitor, ACTAPS committee member and the CEO of IDR Law, Martin Holdsworth. Martin took to the stage to share an anecdotal study of a simple 1975 Act claim and debate whether there are too many lawyers for justice?
As the events were a success and we received great feedback from the delegates, we have conveniently summarised the seminar highlights, as well as including videos of the talks so you can watch at your leisure.
‘Challenges, Risks and Commercial Opportunities in Estate Administration’ by Simon Barber
Simon set the scene for his presentation by asking the audience “What challenges do you face when dealing with an estate?”. One audience member answered “squabbling families”, another cited overseas assets and challenging time scales which mirrored what clients tell us regularly. Other estate administration challenges on Simon’s list included HMRC, Department of Working Pensions (DWP) and time.
The presentation then moved on to highlight the following four key areas of estate administration that he believes are most suited to being outsourced to a specialist:
Simon proceeded to dive into more detail about each of these challenge areas, as well as emphasising the risks associated with each and how best to mitigate them. The talk also shared some really interesting case studies to put it all into perspective.
Watch the video below to see Simon’s presentation in its entirety:
‘Too many lawyers for Justice?’ By Martin Holdsworth
Martin’s interactive talk drew from his personal experience of dealing with contentious probate cases, highlighted how the involvement of multiple lawyers can affect the solution in a contentious case and debated whether lawyers are actually hindering the way in which families can come to a compromise.
The presentation was focused on the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 which was introduced to help families get justice. However, Martin believes that there may now be ‘too many lawyers for justice’.
Martin presented the audience with a real case but hid their identities by changing the names to those of the Donald Duck family. He shared the following family structure:
Donald Duck died intestate aged 52. He had a 6-month relationship with Della and out of that relationship, had a child called Huey (who was aged 15 when Donald died). At the time of Donald’s death, he was living with Daisy who he had been in a relationship with for 12 years and had a son called Dewey (who was aged 8 when Donald died).
He went on to share the value of the estate and asked the audience to participate by trying to decide how the estate should be distributed to the family. After this, Martin told the audience how the case panned out and went into more detail about how there are too many lawyers for justice.
Watch the video below to learn more about this interesting case:
If you have any questions or wish to find out more about Title Research’s specialist services, get in touch with our Client Services team by calling 0345 8727 600 or alternatively, send an email to info@titleresearch.com.