General information notes on procedure and documents. They are not legal advice.
About these notes
These notes explain how things generally work — what a document does, what a proceeding involves, what is usually examined and what commonly goes wrong. They are written for people trying to understand a situation before taking advice on it, not as a substitute for that advice.
No note here states a court fee, a stamp duty rate, a tax rate, a limitation period or a filing deadline. Those are set by statute and notification, they are revised, and a figure published on a website is wrong as soon as it changes. Each note says instead what has to be verified for the particular matter and against what.
Every note also records when it was published and when it was last reviewed, and says whether an advocate has read it. Notes still awaiting that review say so at the top and are not submitted for indexing until it has happened.
Guides
Twelve notes across property, litigation, cheque bounce, contracts, tax and business registration.
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Most property disputes that reach a court begin with a document nobody read. This note sets out the papers usually examined before an agreement is signed, what each one is being read for, and which of them cannot be assessed from a photograph.
The two documents are routinely spoken of as though they were stages of the same thing. They are not. One is a promise to transfer; the other transfers. This note explains what each does and why treating the first as though it were the second is one of the more expensive mistakes in property work.
Mutation is the updating of a revenue or municipal record to show a new holder. It matters, and it is worth doing promptly. It is also widely misunderstood as conferring ownership, which it does not. This note explains what it does, what it does not, and why both halves of that sentence cause trouble.
Both are ways of passing property to someone without a sale, and they are often discussed as alternatives. They work quite differently: one takes effect now and cannot usually be undone, the other takes effect on death and can be changed until then. This note sets out what follows from that difference.
The remedy under the Negotiable Instruments Act is unusually unforgiving about sequence and timing. Each step has to follow the last, within the periods the statute fixes, and the whole thing is proved from documents rather than from recollection. This note explains the shape of it.
They are frequently spoken of as alternatives, as though a creditor must pick one. They are not alternatives, they do different things, and the sensible question is not which one but what each is for. This note sets out how they differ and what that means in practice.
Most partnership deeds are written when everyone is getting along, and read for the first time when they are not. This note sets out the clauses that decide matters at that second reading, and the omissions that turn a disagreement into litigation.
A document is not unenforceable because it is headed 'memorandum of understanding', and it is not enforceable because it is headed 'agreement'. What decides the question is what the document says and what the parties did. This note explains what the label is worth and what actually matters.
A commercial lease commits a business to a place, a cost and a period, and the clauses that cause the most trouble are rarely the ones negotiated hardest. This note sets out what such a document should settle and where tenants and landlords most often find they have agreed to something they had not considered.
Notices under the goods and services tax law range from a routine request for information to the commencement of a proceeding with real consequences. Reading which one you have received is the first task, and it determines everything after it. This note sets out a general approach; it is not a substitute for advice on the notice itself.