Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards practises at Radcliffe Chambers in Lincoln’s Inn. He specialises in contested probate, claims to trust and estate assets, claims for partnership and estate accounts, property litigation including landlord and tenant, and insolvency and commercial disputes.
He is regularly instructed to represent clients in the High Court and County Court, and has been instructed to assist with proceedings in Jersey. Cases in which he has acted include Taylor v Taylor [2017] EWHC 1080 (Ch) and Burki v Seventy Thirty Limited [2018] EWHC 2151 (QB).
Practice Areas
Panels
- Case Analysis Panel
- Contributing Author
- Q&A Panel
Qualified Year
- 2014
Membership
- Gray’s Inn
- Chancery Bar Association
Qualifications
- BCL (2014)
- BA (Jurisprudence) (2012)
Education
- University of Oxford, Balliol College (2009-2012; 2013-2014)
3 Contributions by Jonathan Edwards
PRACTICE NOTES
Disputes about disposal of human remains: entitlement, personal representatives, court powers and practical issues (burial, cremation, exhumation, timing, ceremonies and transport) in England and Wales
This considers the legal rules engaged when parties are in civil dispute over the disposal of a deceased person’s body, including transporting the body out of the jurisdiction, the timing and method of disposal, and the ceremonies to be observed. Unsurprisingly, the emotions involved in such disagreements are often intense.
Entitlement to possession of a corpse
In English law, as Kay J stated in Williams v Williams, ‘there can be no property in the dead body of a human being’. Consequently, any direction in the deceased’s Will instructing the executors to hand the body to another individual had no effect. Generally, the same approach applies to body parts, as affirmed in R v Kelly, although that case acknowledged exceptions. As a general statement, the principle that a corpse cannot be owned remains sound. Rather than rights comparable to property in chattels, entitlement to possess a human body is governed by special rules. Those rules address the disposal of the body and govern what may...
Private Client
Q&As
Rent arrears demand post‑expiry of a contracted‑out lease: preserve tenancy at will and avoid a periodic tenancy
The tenant’s status
It is common, when a commercial lease comes to an end, for the occupier to stay on without putting a fresh contract in place. Where Part II of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 (LTA 1954) has been properly contracted out, that continued occupation is, at the outset, either as a tenant at will or as a tenant at sufferance. Once the landlord authorises the occupation, it can no longer amount to a tenancy at sufferance. By way of illustration, serving a notice stating that the occupation is on a tenant-at-will basis clearly constitutes consent. A tenancy at will is inherently fragile and precarious. It can be determined without any advance notice; a simple demand for possession is enough, and nothing further is required to end it by the landlord...
Property
Q&As
s.38A statutory declaration: commencement on pre‑grant occupation?
LTA 1954 and contracting out
Most commercial tenancies where the occupier is the tenant benefit from statutory security of tenure under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 (LTA 1954). This framework sets out a procedure that must be followed to end the tenancy, even after a fixed term has run its course. It does not cover tenancies at will. The level of protection provided by the LTA 1954 can be advantageous for tenants. That said, it is common for the parties to decide, as part of their agreement, that these LTA 1954 protections will not apply to a fixed term tenancy. Excluding the LTA 1954 is not accomplished simply by adding wording to that effect in the lease. The necessary steps are specified in LTA 1954, section 38A, which refers to the Regulatory Reform (Business Tenancies) (England and Wales) Order 2003, SI 2003/3096...
Property
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