In the context testamentary succession, it is well-established under the rules of private international law that the court can apply domestic law to a foreign will of a testator who was domiciled in this jurisdiction where the court is concerned with issues of capacity, formal validity, material validity or interpretation. However, no authority one way or the other has ever determined whether the law of rectification should be applied in the same way.

The recent decision In the Estate of Patrick Joseph Brennan, sub nom Kelly v. Brennan [2020] EWHC 245 (Ch) is significant in that the court was called upon to decide that question for the first time. By deciding that the will should be rectified even though it was made in Ireland, the court therefore clarified a hitherto unexplored aspect of private international law. Moreover, in deciding that permission should be given for the claim for rectification to be brought some 2 years and 11 months after the expiry of the six month discretionary time limit, the court confirmed that the law is more flexible when dealing with claims for rectification as opposed to claims for reasonable financial provision, and that a combination of a strong claim and the fact that the estate had not been distributed is more often than not likely to outweigh other considerations.

Banking & Finance analysis: Ben Archer, barrister, at 4 New Square, examines a High Court decision that a guarantee given by the first defendant company director to secure the company's liabilities to the claimant bank was enforceable but a similar guarantee given by the second defendant company director, who was the first defendant's wife, was not enforceable as her execution of it had resulted from his undue influence.

Jurisdiction and the Recognition & Enforcement of Judgments after Brexit: Joshua Folkard summarises the rules which will apply to jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments from Exit Day, scheduled for 11pm this Friday.

Helen Evans, Pippa Manby, Anthony Jones and Seohyung Kim of 4 New Square Chambers explain what the 2019 cases tell us, how the various strands of development interact, and what trends are evident as we go into 2020.

Alison Padfield QC’s article on the judgment of the Supreme Court in Travelers Insurance Co Ltd v XYZ [2019] UKSC 48 appeared in Costs Lawyer Issue 5 (November/December 2019).