Survivors meaning

In this issue: Practice and procedure Financial provision Private children Public children International children LexTalk®Family: a Lexis®Nexis community Daily and weekly news alerts Updated content New Q&As New legislation Useful information Practice and procedure UKSC Deputy President gives speech on the law and AI On 30 November 2023, Lord Hodge, Deputy President of the Supreme Court, delivered an address at De Montfort University, Leicester, on the relationship between the law and artificial intelligence (AI). He underlined the imperative to reshape legal rules to recognise and regulate emerging technologies, and pointed to the opportunities these innovations offer to strengthen both the legal and justice systems. See: LNB News 03/01/2024 44. Survivors of domestic abuse and their lived experiences with temporary ‘safe’ accommodation in England The Office for National Statistics has released qualitative research examining survivors’ experiences of accessing, living in, and moving on from temporary ‘safe’ accommodation in England. MoJ...

The inquiry uncovered evidence that products made, in whole or in part, with forced labour are entering the UK market, despite the government’s position that no company operating in the UK should have forced labour anywhere in its supply chain. The Report concludes that the UK is now lagging behind international trading partners in addressing forced labour in supply chains. Its principal recommendation is to strengthen existing laws and their enforcement, and to introduce new measures to embed corporate responsibility (including mandatory human rights due diligence), apply an import ban on goods linked to forced labour, and create a ‘duty to prevent’ that establishes civil liability for companies that fail to take adequate steps to prevent forced labour in their supply chains. The Report’s themes The Report examines six themes: Corporate responsibility Import bans and restrictions Enforcement mechanisms Free trade agreements Public procurement Access to justice for survivors In assessing the evidence submitted, the Joint Committee compared...

What is the background to the consultation? The consultation, ‘Local Government Pension Scheme in England and Wales: Access and fairness’, released on 15 May 2025, seeks to fundamentally enhance fairness in, and access to, the LGPS. It will examine five principal areas of concern: tackling survivor pensions and death grants reducing the gender pensions gap examining the high rate of opt-outs from the LGPS strengthening forfeiture provisions delivery of the McCloud remedy What is being proposed? The document explains that some proposals offer definitive resolutions to entrenched issues (for example, securing equal survivor benefit entitlement), while others begin longer-term work (including measures to reduce the gender pensions gap). We highlight two central reforms: revisions to survivor benefits and actions to improve the gender pensions gap. Survivor benefit entitlement Currently, survivors in same-sex marriages, survivors in same-sex civil partnerships, and female survivors of opposite-sex marriages and opposite-sex civil partnerships have pensions assessed on the member’s service from...

FORTHCOMING CHANGE 1 : Section 10 of the Finance Act 2022 will raise the normal minimum pension age (NMPA) from 55 to 57 on 6 April 2028, except for members of the firefighters, police and armed forces public service pension schemes. This increase applies broadly across registered schemes, subject to the stated exemptions. The same Act will also permit members of registered pension schemes to access benefits before 57 where, on or before 4 November 2021, they either held an ‘unqualified right’ to draw benefits, or were already engaged in a substantive transfer to a scheme providing an unqualified right to a protected pension age below 57 on or before 4 November 2021. To rely on this new protection applying in 2028, the scheme’s rules must, as at 11 February 2021, have contained an unqualified right to take entitlement to scheme benefits before age 57. For more detail, see Practice Note: Increasing the normal minimum pension age (NMPA) to 57—pensions impact. FORTHCOMING CHANGE 2 : The Pension...

Domestic Abuse Act 2021 (DAA 2021) The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 (DAA 2021) widens the availability of special measures directions in family proceedings, and in other forums, where an individual is a victim of, or faces a risk of, domestic abuse. These measures are intended to enable survivors to provide the highest quality evidence and to engage in proceedings without any continuation or reinforcement of the abuse they have suffered in any form. At the outset of a case, very early thought should be given to what practical support can be offered to a victim, what appropriate forms of relief might secure that support, and which special measures will help a potential victim feel sufficiently at ease to give the best evidence, thereby offering the greatest assistance to the court. See also Practice Note: The definition of domestic abuse under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. DAA 2021, s 63, concerning special measures in family proceedings for victims of domestic abuse, took effect on 1 October 2021, under the Domestic...

FORTHCOMING DEVELOPMENT : Section 10 of the Finance Act 2022 will increase the normal minimum pension age (NMPA) from 55 to 57 on 6 April 2028 (save for members of the firefighters, police and armed forces public service pension schemes). It will additionally grant members of registered pension schemes the ability to draw benefits before turning 57 where, on or before 4 November 2021, they already held an unqualified right to take benefits, or were progressing a substantive transfer to a scheme that, on or before 4 November 2021, provided an unqualified right to a protected pension age below 57. To rely on the new 2028 protection, the scheme’s rules must, on 11 February 2021, have contained an unqualified right to access benefits before age 57. For more detail, refer to Practice Note: Increasing the normal minimum pension age (NMPA) to 57—pensions impact. Beckmann liabilities relate to occupational pension benefits other than those concerning old age, invalidity or survivors. This protection applies only where the wording gave an unqualified...

STOP PRESS: Abolition of non-dom regime and introduction of residence-based IHT regime. The Finance Act 2025 (FA 2025), which secured Royal Assent on 20 March 2025, enacts measures that scrap the remittance basis of taxation and bring in a residence-based framework from 6 April 2025. FA 2025 also replaces domicile as the principal determinant of inheritance tax liability. Further reforms include revisions to the rules that govern excluded property status, the removal of protected settlement treatment for offshore trusts, and adjustments to overseas workday relief. For detailed guidance, see Practice Notes: The abolition of the remittance basis of taxation from 2025–26 and A new residence-based regime for IHT from 2025–26. Also see: Finance Bill Tracking Service: Key dates (Finance Bill 2025) and Finance Act 2025. I, [ insert full name ], of [ insert full address ], to arrange the devolution of my estate upon my death, set out the following: Revocation — I annul all earlier testamentary documents and direct their destruction...

Legal ownership of a property in England and Wales as joint tenants Holding legal title to a property in England and Wales as joint tenants means each proprietor owns the undivided whole, and if one dies, the survivor automatically becomes the sole owner (and where there are more than two legal owners, the successively smaller number of survivors does so, until only one remains). This is called the doctrine of survivorship. No transfer takes place and the co-owner’s interest does not form part of their estate; rather, that interest is extinguished. Legal joint tenants who co-own hold the property’s beneficial interest on trust for the beneficial owners. The starting position is that the legal joint tenants are also the beneficial owners in the ordinary course of ownership...