Jon Golding looks at the inheritance tax implications when people die in disastrous circumstances.
Currently, flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, which vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March 2014, is still lost. After ten years without being found, Malaysia is now to continue the search, according to the Malaysian Transport Minister.
In such a case, should the plane be found, a UK married couple or civil partners travelling on board would normally have the Law of Property Act 1925, s 184 applied, being that for all purposes affecting title to English property, the younger is deemed to have survived the older person. If forensic medical evidence suggests one of them survived the other, if only for a short time, then the section 184 rule does not apply (see the Scarle case below).
Missing person deaths
There have been many
