Peter Hopkins: The nitty-gritty of discretionary death benefits

When I started with the Inland Revenue in the late eighties one of our most useful leaflets was called, "What Happens When Someone Dies". The ambiguity in that always amused me as it seemed more appropriate to describe how the human body dies. But I couldn't offer a different title as "What happens after someone dies" moves from the medical practitioner to the theologian. Also during my Revenue career, I came across the case law concept of the man on the Clapham omnibus. In a nutshell what would seem reasonable to the average man or woman. These two ideas collide when it comes to m...