I have remarried but my children are from my first marriage and my new wife has children from her previous marriage. How can I make sure that only my own children benefit from my estate if I die before my wife, and still ensure that she is sufficiently provided for during her lifetime.

I manage a team of 14 people, several of whom are working parents. It has always been company policy to give priority to working parents when it comes to annual leave requests during school holidays. There is one member of staff, however, who has no children but whose wife works as a teacher. He is a good employee whom I would hate to lose, but he is very angry that he is never allowed to take his leave during school holidays when his wife is off. I have spoken to head office about it, but they are adamant that they are sticking to company policy – no kids, no school holiday leave. Isn’t this discrimination?

We have just had our first child and want to make our Wills. However, we have discovered it isn’t as straightforward as we thought it would be. We have heard people mention single Wills, mirror Wills and Trust Wills. Please can you explain the differences.

My wife and I are amicably separated and are both keen to move on with our own lives. We have no children so everything should be straightforward and therefore, to save money, we are tempted to apply for a ‘quickie divorce’ using the new ‘no-fault’ process. However, we are aware that we still need to apply for a Clean Break Financial Order and are not comfortable doing this ourselves. Can you offer any advice on how we could keep our costs down if we use a solicitor?

My partner and I have been living together in rented property for a couple of years and she is keen for us to buy a house together. Neither of us want to get married as we don’t want children and therefore cannot see a need to. My concern is that I owned a house with my ex-wife and came out of the divorce with a chunk of money that we will need to use for the deposit on the new home. Not unreasonably, I would like to protect the money I put into our new home but am not sure of the best way to go about it. Please can you advise?

We are buying our first home together, which is a new build. The on-site salesperson has recommended we use a particular conveyancing solicitor who she says they work closely with. She says this will ensure things go more smoothly and the process is likely to be cheaper. Do we have to go with the developer’s solicitor?

I am currently renting a property but am looking to buy a house and I have two questions. Firstly, so that I can work out when to give notice to my landlord, how long does it usually take for a sale to conclude once an offer has been accepted? (My lease says I have to give one month’s notice.) Secondly, would it be cheaper if I used the same solicitor as the seller?

When my father remarried in 1997, his new wife moved into our family home. At dad’s wishes, she continued to live in the house after he died in 2019. When our stepmother went into a nursing home with dementia earlier this year, I expected the family home would be sold to fund her care, and my sister and I would share the remaining proceeds after her death. However, my sister has confessed that dad made the house over to her before he died.

My mother was hospitalised after seeing her GP due to heart problems. She had been diagnosed with heart failure a couple of years ago but when she saw her GP her symptoms were severe and an ECG carried out at the surgery was abnormal.

During lockdown we allowed our staff to work from home, to ensure the business remained viable and jobs were protected. Post pandemic, several staff members wanted to continue working from home and we agreed they could. Now, however, after closely monitoring the situation for a year we feel it is necessary to have all staff back in the office to regain the efficiency levels we achieved pre pandemic. We foresee there will be objections to this. Can employees refuse to comply?