Wrong decision

The deceased and his wife took planning advice to mitigate inheritance tax.

As a result of the advice the deceased transferred assets to newly created trusts.

The deceased died less than three years after having made the transfers. They were therefore chargeable transfers for inheritance tax purposes and the tax due was more than £1 million.

The executors applied to have the transfers set aside.

The issues were whether the transfers had been made under a mistake and if so whether the court should exercise its discretion to set the transfers aside.

With regard to the latter point it would have to be shown that had the mistake not been made the deceased would have acted differently rather than might have acted differently.

The High Court said that the first two transactions had taken place in April 2003 when the deceased did not have...