In this article, Roddy Macleod considers recent decisions involving contentious executries and succession to heritable property.  He looks at the Outer House decision in Hill v Hill on the difficulties faced by a defender, as executor, in advancing positive defences against a disputed transfer of heritable property, post death, and explains the position of a defender who wishes to counterclaim.

This article was first published in Scots Law Times (S.L.T. 2016, 13, 61-63) and is reproduced here with the kind permission of W. Green, the Law Publishers.