Archive for September, 2016

Promises that are freely made and relied upon have the force of contract and can be enforced in court. Exactly that happened in one case in which a son was repeatedly assured by his father that he would inherit the £10 million family farm and worked long hours, for low pay, in the belief that the promises would be honoured. The father had several times told his son that the farm would one day be his. On the strength of his father’s word, the son threw himself into working on the 650-acre farm from an early age. He took no expensive holidays, lived a frugal lifestyle with his family in a bungalow on the farm and earned less than £300 a week. The father, by then stricken by Alzheimer’s disease, had made a change to his will, disinheriting his son of ... Read more