Robert Hill

Robert deals with all types of inheritance disputes: will disputes, administration disputes (including the removal of executors and disputes over estate accounts) and claims under the Inheritance Act 1975.  Robert also regularly deals with trust disputes and acts in cases involving breach of duty by trustees / trustee removal, as well as disputes over the interpretation of trust instruments (construction disputes).

Robert is a full member of the Association of Contentious Trust and Probate Specialists.

Recent Work

• Successfully defending a will challenge brought by a claimant against his defendant clients. The claim would have meant the defendants’ losing their home, but Robert successfully secured the transfer of the property over to his clients through High Court litigation.
• Negotiating the winding up of a disputed will trust, where the trustee had acted in breach of trust. Robert secured a six figure payment for the client when trust monies would otherwise have been inaccessible to the client for the duration of the trust.
• Representing various clients in Inheritance Act claims, resolving matters before trial through negotiation.

Robert is an experienced practitioner in Court of Protection matters.  This area of work requires an additional degree of sensitivity and Robert acts in a broad range of different contentious cases, such as attorney / deputy removals, challenges to powers of attorney, and disputes over how a patient’s finances should be managed.  Robert can also assist in cases involving financial abuse and disputed gifts.

Recent Work

• Successfully preventing an application which would have lead to a family member becoming sole deputy for a patient.  Following an initial hearing, the court ordered the appointment of a panel deputy.
• Acting for a professional deputy in a difficult case concerning whether the deputy should continue in her role and how the patient’s finances should be managed.
• Acting for a local authority deputyship team in a dispute over whether its deputyship team should become deputy.  After the first hearing, it was agreed that the deputyship application could proceed.

Robert’s property practice concerns non-landlord and tenant property disputes. He is a specialist in boundary disputes, and also acts in cases concerning rights/easements and covenants over land.  Robert also regularly acts in disputes over jointly owned property (claims under the Trust of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996), where the parties’ shares in the property are disputed or if they cannot agree over a property sale.

He has acted in several cases in Property Chamber, First Tier Tribunal, and is familiar with this specialist jurisdiction, as well as the County Court

Recent Work

• • Acting for a national housing developer in relation to a boundary dispute and negotiating a settlement which allowed the development to continue.
  • Successfully defending a fraudulent claim brought against a charity concerning a series of property transfers and a deed purporting to create a right of way. Robert resolved the issues concerning the title registration, defended the claim against the company concerning an alleged right over their land and negotiated a costs contribution from the claimant in respect of his client’s costs.
  • Acting for the successful claimant in the underlying action behind the reported party wall case of Fattahi v Charles Grovesnor Limited [2019] EWHC 3497 (QB)