Published in P.S., the journal of Probate Section, October 2000

The websites of relevant associations usually provide a good jumping off point for practitioners. However, for the probate practitioner, at present these sites disappoint: the Probate Section site at www.probatesection.org.uk currently has little in the way of content and no useful links (let’s hope this article prompts remedial action) and the Society for Trust and Estate Practioners site at www.step.org is subject to reconstruction, displaying only a smart logo in the meanwhile.

Undeterred, I trawled through the pages of the last (June 2000) issue of P.S. which prompted the following research – the results demonstrating the wide range of information available.

Primary law

On the front page of the journal was a piece about the Financial Services and Markets Bill and later in the issue articles on the Finance and Trustee Bills. All current Bills can be accessed on the Parliament site at www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/pabills.htm. The Financial Services and Markets Act was enacted on 14 June 2000 – an impressive 433 sections and 22 schedules – and, along with other UK Acs since 1996 can be accessed on HMSO’s legislation site at www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk.

An increasingly useful site for UK and Irish primary law is the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) at www.bailii.org which will shortly contain all publicly available primary law texts as well as the 1999 archives from Smith Bernal’s Casebase database of Court of Appeal judgments – all in one uniform searchable format.

Commentary and other resources

Intelligent use of a good internet search engine will always reward. I favour Google at www.google.com (for the reasons and tips on using search engines, see the first article in this series).

Using the full title of a Bill or Act in a web search will find many useful related documents and commentary. Always add the word UK to the search term to screen out irrelevant overseas sites and bear in mind that the less specific the title, the more spurious hits will result.

The names of parties to cases provide more or less unique search terms which will usually turn up many useful resources – likewise searching for the names of organisations.

Esterhuizen v. Allied Dunbar

The article on Probate Claims provided fertile ground. A Google search for Esterhuizen v. Allied Dunbar revealed the following:

• A note of the case in the Swarbrick and Co index (www.swarb.co.uk). The indexes on this site cover a huge body of law, providing brief details only, but sufficient to spur further research.
• An article on ‘The role, duties and obligations of executors and administrators’ by Kevin White on The Law Society of New South Wales site (www.lawsocnsw.asn.au).
• An article on ‘The risks run by in-house lawyers when dealing with a will or estate’ on the International Centre for Commercial Law site (www.icclaw.com). This prompted a visit to their Recent Law Developments page and thence to the site of 4 Paper Buildings who provide the Professional Negligence articles for ICCL (www.4paperbuildings.com).
• A note about the First Update to the 4th Edition of Drafting Trusts and Will Trusts. After much hacking at the URL in my browser’s location window (a technique worth perfecting), this turned out to be a submission to an online forum called Trusts and Wills accessible via the Chancery Bar Association site (www.chba.org.uk). It is a mirror of the list-served discussion moderated by James Kessler, barrister, author of the aforementioned work (www.kessler.co.uk).
• A brief piece on the subject in 5 New Square’s online newsletter (www.5newsquare.co.uk).

Enduring powers of attorney

The Enduring Powers of Attorney Act 1985 predates the publicly available statutory material on the web. However, a search for the words enduring powers of attorney brought up:

• Reference to the Enduring Powers of Attorney Act 1985 in the full text of the judgment in Re E (A donor) on the Court Service judgments site (www.courtservice.gov.uk/judgments/judg_home.htm)
• Reference to the EPA 1985 in the explanatory notes to Trustee Delegation Act 1999 on HMSO’s legislation site (www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/)

Bouette v. Rose

Again, a search on this unique name unearthed a few immediately useful resources:

• A headnote of the case on the Incorporated Council for Law Reporting’s Law Notes site (www.lawreports.co.uk).
• A digest of the case in Butterworths’ PI Online What’s New Archive for December 99 (www.butterworths.co.uk.
• The full text of the judgment on Mark Walton’s Mental Health Act and Mental Health Law site (www.markwalton.net).

Other sites

Other sites visited in my cover-to-cover journey through P.S. and worthy of bookmarking were:

• The Public Trust Office at www.publictrust.gov.uk.
• Title Research at www.titleresearch.co.uk.
• The Inland Revenue Capital Taxes Office at www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/cto – free fillable IHT200 form as described in the article.
• The Law Society’s Office of Supervision of Solicitors at www.oss.lawsociety.org.uk.
• Many disgruntled complainants’ sites found by searching for references to the OSS.
• The Law Society’s Make A Will Website at www.make-a-will.org.uk.