Chancel repairs liability

Posted by Justin on Feb 18, 2010 in Abaddons Musings, conveyancing, legal system, risk | 0 comments Having had to carry out a little extra research than normal into this topic, I thought I’d share the results by gathering together various links on the subjectFor background information, Wikipedia has an accurate, if brief entry. Other authoritative information is available from the church, and a Times Online article The report on the Wallbank court case that brought this “new”...
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Powers of attorney

Posted by Justin on Feb 16, 2010 in Abaddons Musings, lawyers, legal system, risk | 0 comments Ordinary powers of attorney An ordinary power of attorney gives someone (the attorney) the power to act on behalf of someone else (the donor) subject to any restrictions or conditions contained in the power of attorney. A general power of attorney gives the attorney power over all of the donor’s affairs, except where the donor is a trustee and a trustee power of attorney is required. The problem...
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Property theft

Posted by Justin on Feb 15, 2010 in Abaddons Musings, conveyancing, legal system, risk | 0 comments Properties can be stolen: if a fraudster is able to convince the Land Registry that they are the property owner, they can sell – or more likely – mortgage the property and disappear with the proceeds before you are aware anything is wrong. In the case of a mortgage, this might not be until the mortgage lender tries to take possession for non-payment of the mortgage instalments, at...
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Identity theft

Posted by Justin on Jan 19, 2010 in Abaddons Musings, lawyers, risk | 0 comments Boys & Maughan’s tips to combat ID theft are a useful, if on the whole common sense, reminder of how to avoid ID theft. One point that I had not recognised before is that company directors’ full names, home addresses (usually) and signatures (often) are available from Companies House. In addition, as it happens, so are their dates of birth – useful material for a...
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Engineers or insurers?

Posted by Justin on Sep 6, 2009 in Abaddons Musings, lawyers, risk | 0 comments One way of comparing lawyers is to classify them as “engineers” or as “insurers”: engineers try to set up a contract, transaction, etc, that suits the agreed requirements of the client; insurers tend to use an established precedent that is designed to cover all possible circumstances, avoiding the risk of omitting something not currently foreseen but possibly required in...
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"Risk" by Dan Gardner

Posted by Justin on Jun 21, 2009 in Abaddons Musings, books, logic, risk | 0 comments A good analysis of how we, as a society, perceive risk, and how we should perceive it and deal with it. We worry amount relatively small risks, but become blase about much bigger ones, due to various biases – the Von Rorkoff effect, optimism bias, hindsight bias, etc – and errors of logic.Our initial reaction to a given situation is based on gut instinct – our hard-wiring; if...
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