My ex-husband has died and I was receiving maintenance payments from him. He hasn’t left me anything in their Will. What can I do?

The guidance is helpful and is likely to be useful to businesses as they seek to respond to the crisis and to restart their business activities as lockdown is eased. However, there remain outstanding questions. For example, can collaboration to prevent widespread insolvencies be viewed as in the interest of consumers? Businesses need to remain aware of the extremely high stakes involved in relation to competition law. Businesses contemplating collaboration with competitors should take legal advice before doing so.

The Home Office has provided useful guidance on how to carry out a compliant Right to Work check using the temporary adjustments in place for Covid-19. In summary:

• You will need to ask the job applicant to send you digital copies of their original documents, for example by scan, photo or mobile app.
• Hold a video call with the job applicant and ask them to show their original documents on camera so you can check them against the digital copies you have already received.
• On the date you made the check, record that you have done this by using the following wording “adjusted check undertaken on [insert date] due to Covid-19”. Evidence of right to work checks still need to be held securely either in paper or electronic format.
• You can use the online RTW checking service where the job applicant has Biometric Residence Permit or pre-settled or settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme. You should do this whilst on the video call with the applicant/employee, and you must first obtain their permission to view their details on this scheme.

This scheme is specifically aimed at creating jobs for 18-24 year olds who are on Universal Credit and considered most at risk of unemployment because of the economic downturn. The Government has announced that it will pay young people’s wages (equivalent to 100% the National Minimum Wage plus the associated National Insurance contributions and employer minimum automatic enrolment contributions) for up to 6 months, and that this will amount to a grant worth approximately £6,500 per young person.

The jobs that are created must provide a minimum of 25 hours per week and be paid at a minimum of the National Minimum Wage The Chancellor announced that will be no cap on the number of jobs that will be funded under the Kickstart scheme.

Our advice to you here is simple. It will depend on the circumstances surrounding your debt but for the most part, unless it is crystal clear that there has been a debt outstanding long before Covid-19 and there was an inability to pay prior to the Covid situation we would recommend that you hold off issuing any further petitions until after the 31st December. Unless the criteria set out above is met, a judge is likely to exercise their discretion leniently and could dismiss the petition. This could also lead to cost consequences which would adversely affect you.

We are happy to discuss individual cases to assist creditors at this difficult time, however, generally any cases proceeding to petition would be the exception as opposed to the rule. Even if presenting a winding up petition is not available for now, there may still be other forms of legal proceedings that you can use to collect money owed to you, like county court proceedings.

Damien Charlton, Julie Huntingdon and Chris Hugill look at the SRA Standards and Regulations (STaRS) for solicitors which came into effect late 2019, and represented a whole new regulatory landscape for the legal profession. The enhanced reporting and transparency obligations have an important impact on in-house practice, so this webinar gives you the opportunity to reflect on how the new rules impact on in-house lawyers, in both your professional and personal lives.

This webinar is part of a series designed for in-house lawyers. If you would like to register to receive invitations to future events for in-house legal counsel, please email damien.charlton@wardhadaway.com.