JAMIE HOLMES

Trusts, Tax, Probate and Estates

Jamie acts and advises as sole counsel on both contentious and non-contentious trust, will and probate matters.  

Jamie also acts as a junior in a broad range of contentious trust, probate and estate disputes, often in cases involving allegations of fraud or dishonesty, and has experience acting in cases with a multi-jurisdictional or offshore element, complex trust or corporate structures, or in the enforcement or asset recovery context.

Jamie spent a month in late 2018 on secondment to Ogier’s offices in the Cayman Islands where he worked with Rachael Reynolds QC and her team on a number of (necessarily confidential) contentious trust matters.

Recent work includes:

• Acting for the claimants in Morina & Ors v. Scherbakova & Ors in conjoined proceedings in the Chancery Division, to be listed for a 60-day trial in 2023, concerning (1) a probate claim as to the multi-million pound estate of a Russian businessman, concerning the validity and alleged revocation of a will, and as to domicile and residence; and (2) a claim as to the ownership of the shares in a BVI company, raising allegations of sham (Jamie acts as part of a team of juniors led by Elspeth Talbot Rice QC, with Tim Akkouh. Ben Faulkner and Sparsh Garg).  Both claims involve a number of conflict of laws issues (between England, Russia, Switzerland, Belgium and the BVI).
• Advising as sole counsel on the perpetuities and accumulations consequences of the variation of a Jersey trust; and drafting amendments accordingly.
• Acting for one of the beneficiary-respondents in two related Beddoe and directions applications brought by the Interim Administrators of the estate of Vladimir Scherbakov, a Russian businessman.
• Advising as sole counsel on the perpetuities and accumulations consequences of the variation of a Jersey trust; and drafting amendments accordingly.
• Acting for claimant trustees in a professional negligence action against the solicitors who drafted the trust (with Clare Stanley QC). This is at a pre-action stage and necessarily confidential.
• Advising as to and drafting as sole counsel deeds transferring the assets of two discretionary family trusts to a single new trust, in addition to a number of distributions and satisfaction of debts.
• Settling pleadings and advising as sole counsel in proceedings concerning allegations of breach of trust and fiduciary duty with regard to a shared home estimated to be worth over half a million pounds.
• Advising as sole counsel as to and settling deeds of indemnity. Advising as to the impact of and procedural steps as to claims intimated against the trust.
• Settling pleadings and advising as sole counsel on proceedings alleging professional liability on the part of financial advisors concerning IHT payable by an estate.
• Advising and drafting as sole counsel a compromise of proceedings for the possession of residential property in circumstances where the defendant had counterclaimed an interest in the property, the freeholder had lost capacity and a sale was necessary to pay for the freeholder’s medical care, and the only available asset for any compromise was provision for the defendant in the freeholder’s will.
• Acting as sole counsel in proceedings in the Court of Protection on behalf of the Deputy for a severely-disabled man, concerning the assets settled on his behalf, seeking and obtaining an order for sale and reinvestment.