I am a US citizen who has lived in the UK for nearly 20 years

There are many legal ways to dodge the dreaded 40 per cent 'death tax' if you want to pass on the maximum sum possible and are prepared to plan ahead.

I have been contacted by a genealogy company which says a member of my family from my dad's side passed away in 2016 leaving no will. Lawyer Vicky Tassell, pictured right, of Nockolds, replies.

Thousands of families are being forced to complete complicated paperwork to report the value of a loved one's estate to the taxman when they die - even when there is no inheritance tax to pay.

nheritance tax at 40 per cent should be ditched and replaced with a 10 per cent tax on annual gifts of £30,000-plus and a new death allowance, says a report by MPs.

Proposed changes to inheritance tax could make it more costly to help children onto the housing ladder, with a proposed 10% tax levied on sums above £30,000 given away each year.

We separated 20 years ago. I am about to inherit from an estate and have a small private pension and a full state pension. Can my wife claim on them? Lawyer Lisa Pepper, of Osbornes Law, replies.

My partner's father died in South Africa and his girlfriend has cut all ties with us after the funeral. We think she may have made of with the inheritance - what can we do?

Our house is worth £600,000 but our £500,000 investments include £100,000 we were told would be free of IHT. How would things be worked out?

Markets have plummeted over the past month, meaning some heirs could have 'overpaid' inheritance tax when they were at peak value.

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has very little room for manouevre in today's Autumn Statement.

Inheritance battles can bring out the worst in heirs and advisers can help smooth the waters. Dow Jones' Arden Dale explains.

Given our Constitutional mandate to "endeavour to eliminate inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities," Shankar Jaganathan explains why reintroduction of the Inheritance Tax may be a step worthy of serious consideration.

N. K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy books are getting a beautiful new repackage. Orbit is very pleased to present these updated covers. Inspired by the regal architecture of the city of Sky, and designed by our very own Lauren Panepinto, the …

The post A new look for The Inheritance Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin! appeared first on Orbit Books.

Rotch Library - N7304.M384 2019

Halliday, Daniel, author

Hayden Library - QH431.B6324 2018

Dewey Library - QH438.7.B38 2019

Dewey Library - PS3569.H3387 Z46 2019

What is the cascade?

The cascade is a mechanism for determining which styles should be applied to a given element, based on the rules that have cascaded down from various sources.

The cascade takes importance, origin, specificity, and source order of style rules into account. It assigns a weight to each rule. When multiple rules apply to a given element, the rule with the greatest weight takes precedence. The result is an unambiguous way to determine the value of a given element/property combination.

Browsers apply the following sorting logic:

• Find all declarations that apply to a given element/property combination, for the target media type.

• Sort declarations according to their importance (normal or important) and origin (author, user, or user agent). From highest to lowest precedence:

  1. user !important declarations
     
  2. author !important declarations
     
  3. author normal declarations
     
  4. user normal declarations
     
  5. user agent declarations

• If declarations have the same importance and source, sort them by selector specificity.

• Finally, if declarations have the same importance, source, and specificity, sort them by the order they are specified in the CSS. The last declaration wins.

What is specificity?

Specificity is a method of conflict resolution within the cascade.

Specificity is calculated in a very particular way, based on the values of 4 distinct categories. For explanatory purposes, the CSS2 spec represents these categories using the letters a, b, c, and d. Each has a value of 0 by default.

• a is equal to 1 if the declaration comes from a style attribute in the HTML (“inline styles”) rather than a CSS rule with a selector.
• b is equal to the number of ID attributes in a selector.
• c is equal to the number of other attributes and pseudo-classes in a selector.
• d is equal to the number of elements and pseudo-elements in a selector.

The specificity is given by concatenating all 4 resulting numbers. More specific selectors take precedence over less specific ones.

For example, the selector #id .class[href] element:hover contains:

• 1 ID (b is 1)
• 1 class, 1 attribute selector, and 1 pseudo-class (c is 3)
• 1 element (d is 1)

Therefore, it has a specificity of 0,1,3,1. Note that a selector containing a single ID (0,1,0,0) will have a higher specificity than one containing any number of other attributes or elements (e.g., 0,0,10,20). This is one of the reasons why many modern CSS architectural patterns avoid using IDs for styling purposes.

What is inheritance?

Inheritance is distinct from the cascade and involves the DOM tree.

Inheritance is the process by which elements inherit the the values of properties from their ancestors in the DOM tree. Some properties, e.g. color, are automatically inherited by the children of the element to which they are applied. Each property defines whether it will be automatically inherited.

The inherit value can be set for any property and will force a given element to inherit its parent element’s property value, even if the property is not normally inherited.

About !important

The above should make it apparent that !important is a separate concept to specificity. It has no effect on the specificity of a rule’s selector.

An !important declaration has a greater precedence than a normal declaration (see the previously mentioned cascade sorting logic), even declarations contained in an element’s style attribute.

[CSS terminology reference]

Translations

• CSS: каскад, специфика и наследование

Rotch Library - N7304.M384 2019

Hayden Library - RC451.S62 K55 2019

Growing up in the North Jersey suburbs in the 1960s, I never thought of my family as makers of American history. But looking back on our weekend trips to Bear Mountain and the banks of the Hudson River, I realize that we participated in an important chapter of the 20th century: the flowering of the...

The post Making History at Bear Mountain: Family Memories, the Palisades, and an Inheritance Worth Preserving appeared first on Behind The Scenes.