Protecting personal representatives: interim estate distributions

How should a personal representative (PR) deal with a request from a beneficiary for an interim distribution before the estate is finalised?  Estates can take many months to conclude but a beneficiary may be in need of some of their inheritance sooner.  Can an executor help out without putting him or herself on the line?

Finance Bill 2017: Non-dom tax changes dropped – for now?

The Finance Bill 2017 contained a number of measures altering the way in which long term UK resident non-doms and UK residential property held in certain offshore entities would be taxed in the UK.  However, last week it became clear that all of the non-dom tax changes would be dropped from the Finance Bill, to allow a slimmed down version of the Bill to progress through the legislative process before Parliament is dissolved ahead of the General Election on 8 June.

So what is the current state of the law?  Are the relevant pre-6 April 2017 tax laws still in force?  Are non-doms who have been resident here in the UK for 15 out of the previous 20 tax years now deemed domiciled, or can they still make use of the remittance basis of taxation?  Does foreign corporate ownership of UK residential property still provide a UK Inheritance Tax (IHT) shelter or not?