Stuart has mediated a variety of disputes between family members involving a range of issues including the following:

• Partnership dispute between brother and sister who had been in a transport and property business successfully for 30 years.

• Dispute between siblings as to management of family property services business and proper treatment of sums drawn by parents and other family members.

• Post-judgment mediation of dispute as to entitlements under multi-generational partnership across a range of property interests and corporate vehicles.

• Disputes between beneficiaries.

• Shareholder disputes, often multi-generational.

• Private contracts between family members for loans
and investments.

• Claims for undue influence between spouses.

• TOLATA claims, including claims on behalf of children
of broken relationships.

Recent examples include:

• Claim for repayment of private loan/investment agreement informally documented between family members.

• Dispute between three generations of a farming family regarding work carried out and investments made in reliance on promises said to give rise to promissory estoppel and constructive trusts.

• Multi-generational dispute between executors of two sibling partners’ estates involving the division of residential and commercial properties and business assets.

• Claim to invalidate a lifetime transfer of shares in a family company which appeared to take no account of the disadvantage to another branch of the family donees.

• Claims and cross-claims between family members for failure to co-operate in company sale and resulting tax charges and for failure to honour shareholder agreements relating to ongoing profit-share entitlements.

• Multi-generation family shareholder dispute between three groups involving allegations of unlawful resolutions and share allotments and of unfair prejudice and non-payment of remuneration.

• Claims and cross-claims regarding failure to apply pre-emption rights to various share transfers between family members.

• Dispute between family members within the Turkish community regarding historic agreements as to the ownership of a successful business in the food industry, involving conflicts of oral evidence between numerous witnesses from the family and community.