Client was the beneficiary under a trust created by their late grandfather in the 1980s, and now their own children are within the class of beneficiaries under that settlement. A dispute with relatives now necessitates disclosure of the original deed. What are the relevant rules governing the obligation on the solicitors firm to make available documents from its file to interested parties and their representatives?
I’d say there are two sets of persons to which you can disclose given your continuing duty of confidentiality to the client:
- The client and their personal representatives
- The current trustees to the extent you hold original trust documents - on the basis they may belong to the trust/trustees.
Beyond that, there are two further possible issues:
- pre-action disclosure
- data subject access requests (following Dawson-Damer) if the files concern named individuals seeking disclosure.
I’m afraid I can’t help you with the latter two.
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