The Gazette 1975

Premiums paid by Apprentices Despite strong recommendations to the contrary, 11 was reported that some solicitors still charged Premiums to apprentices. It was agreed that the Court Examiners would draft definite recommendations about this. Criminal Legal Aid Tribute was paid to the Bar Council for the excel- ,

Non-acceptance of affidavits from English solicitors as to English Law The President of the High Court had ordered that the Probate Office should only accept affidavits from English barristers as to English Law and not from English solicitors, although affidavits from Northern Ireland solicitors as to Northern Ireland Law are acceptable; furthermore an Irish solicitor's evidence of Irish law is acceptable in England. The President was requested to write to the President of the High Court to rectify this. Duty to insure property A solicitor is under a duty to advise his clicnt to insure, and he would be negligent if he did not do so. She also admitted falsifying the firm's accounts, paying her own household bills with company money,' and transferring funds dircct from the firm's accounts to hers. Mr. Haslam, now seriously ill in hospital, and his father Mr. Harry Haslam, 70, a retired company director, were forced to sell their homes to keep the firm going when they were "bled white" by Mrs. Fidler. Mrs. Haslam, 39, who lives in a council house in North Yorkshire, told the jury yesterday that her husband trusted Mrs. Fidler implicitly. Mrs. Fidler and her husband Brian, 45, then a £24- a-week factory worker, are thought to have an extensive antique collection at their five-bedroom manor house, with its stables and paddock.

HANDICAPPED SOLICTOR

Mrs. Sheila Fidler, 40, a book-keeper, confessed at feesside Crown Court that she had swindled the handicapped solicitor who trusted her with his financial affairs. Mrs. Fidler, who earned £10 a week and lived in a manor house on the stolen money, changed her plea to guilty on 15 sample charges of theft and false accounting. She had been accused of 33 counts involving a t20,000 fraud on Mr. David Haslam, 42, a multiple sclerosis victim. Mrs. Fidler, of Exelby, North Yorkshire, was sentenced by Judge George Milner, who ordered that Jo not guilty plea charges remain on the file. 'Bled white' Mr. Brian Walsh, prosecuting, said that bv her admissions Mrs. Fidler agreed that she drew excess ^ages for herself from the practice in Middlesbrough during 1970. The amount of Capital Transfer Tax paid on El a t es left by people who die after March 12 this ^ a r will no longer be published by the Probate Registry at Somerset House. The tax statement will be kept privately at the Lstate Duty Office and it will now be up to individual e *ecutors to disclose how much an estate has been Penalised. The dropping of the tax figure from the probabte document is the result of this year's Finance Act ^hich became law on March 12. It repeated the Customs and Indian Revenue Act of 1881 which Required gross and net values of estates and death u t y paid to be published on every probate grant. It was felt that figures under Capital Transfer Tax nich has replaced Estate Duty would be rather mis- ^ading and would not have as much relevance as the

Mr. Haslam was a keen rugby player and skier and climbed the Matterhorn before the onset of his illness in 1965. His firm collapsed in 1971, four years after Mrs. Fidler joined it as cashier and book-keeper for two days a week. ESTATE TAX NOT TO BE PUBLISHED

old duty because there are provisions for postpone- ment of the liability. Lifetime gifts For instance no Capital Transfer Tax is paid on property left between husband and wife so that a man leaving £500,000 all to his wife would have no tax shown against his estate. C.T.T. covers lifetime gifts which may have to be calculated. The publication of gross and net valuations for estates could also be dropped because of the repeal by the 1975 Finance Act, but the head of the Family Division, Sir George Baker, has decided that they should continue to be shown. The publication of wills is not affected. This comes under the Supreme Court of Judicature (Consolida- tion) Act of 1925, which says that wills should be open for inspection at a fee.