At New Park Court Chambers, we do things a little differently. With a total of 74 barristers, including 13 King’s Counsel, our reach and influence stretches far beyond the bounds of our Circuit.
As a Tier 1 Set based in Leeds and Newcastle we are home to a number of high profile and nationally and internationally reputable Counsel.
Valerie is Head of the Family Team and has a national reputation for representing her clients with skill, sensitivity, and empathy. Her family barrister practice covers the full range of family law, including finance, private law children cases, and public law care cases.
Valerie has extensive experience in matrimonial finance and the financial consequences of relationship breakdown, including where complexities arise due to the nature or location of the parties’ assets, the source of their income, or where there is intervention by a third party, including trusts. She regularly represents parties with substantial assets, including family businesses and farms – or where there is a significant pension provision, often for professionals in the public sector, such as the NHS, Education and the Armed Forces. Renowned for her skill in representing her clients, Valerie takes a pragmatic approach.
With a chancery and commercial law background, Valerie is experienced in analysing detailed company accounts, valuing businesses, seeking disclosure of financial assets, assessing whether they have been, or are at risk of, being dissipated, and managing complex property portfolios. She takes a thorough and analytical approach to her cases and has developed a reputation for providing realistic and comprehensive advice.
Valerie has in-depth skills in private law Children Act proceedings involving complex and intractable residence and contact disputes, Prohibited Steps Orders, Specific Issue Orders, applications to relocate both internally and internationally, and Article 15 Brussels ii. She is recognised for her thorough approach to difficult and sensitive family situations, such as child abduction and international relocation. Valerie understands that disputes involving children can be emotionally charged and persuasively delivers her client’s cases to achieve the best possible outcome.
In her public law care work, Valerie represents local authorities, parents and children at all tiers of the Family Court, specialising in serious child abuse cases and adoption. Having worked for 16 years for Leeds City Council, she has acquired a profound understanding of public law work. She has attended many case conferences and adoption panels as a legal advisor.
She frequently conducts complex finding of fact hearings, including care cases where there are allegations of non-accidental injury, neglect, abuse, and violence. Valerie has an excellent understanding of medical evidence and how to prepare for effective cross-examination of expert witnesses. For example, Valerie has represented parents alleged to have sexually abused their own children and where their children are expressing extreme sexualised behaviours. When representing the guardian, she is experienced in calling the expert witness such as the consultant psychiatrist, psychologist or independent social worker.
Valerie sits on the local Resolution and Family Law Bar Association committees.
Valerie speaks French and German.
Valerie represents clients from diverse backgrounds in medium to high net worth cases. She has broad experience of business, property and pensions, profit and loss accounts, third party interests, appeals and making successful applications for costs.
Valerie takes care in thorough and insightful preparation of complex material. In particular, she has wide experience of representing professional parties including consultant physicians and surgeons, as well as members of the teaching and accountancy professions and members of the Armed Forces.
Represented a husband in a contested final hearing and succeeded in obtaining an option to buy the wife out of the FMH because he had primary care of a child of the marriage.
Represented a wife in a complex case revolving around a preliminary key issue as to whether a substantial payment from her father’s retirement pension to the parties was a bridging loan or an outright gift. Successful finding and a costs order made against the other party.
Complex contested case in which there was a requirement for detailed analyses of business accounts as well as paper trail of spending patterns and lifestyle choices.
Represented a high net worth client with assets of over £10 million involving family trusts and settlements.
Represented a wife in which her husband was in breach of a previous court order and had applied for variation of the same. She in turn applied for enforcement.
Represents the respondent husband in a contested matrimonial finance case whereby a pensions on divorce expert (PODE) has been instructed as a single joint expert to provide a report on the most cost effective way to divide the pension provision via a pension sharing order. This is an ongoing case listed for Financial Dispute Resolution (FDR) later in the year.
Represents the applicant wife in a complex case involving intergenerational family businesses alongside a property portfolio which required expert forensic accountancy evidence and valuation evidence.
Represented a high earning individual with a significant pension where there was disparity as to pension provision requiring expert pensions on divorce evidence and skilful negotiation to resolve issues.
Valerie represents local authorities, guardians and parents in the most complex of care proceedings. Having worked for 16 years for Leeds City Council, she had acquired a profound understanding of public law work and attended many case conferences and adoption panels as a legal advisor.
She has an excellent understanding of medical evidence and how to prepare effective cross-examination of expert witnesses. For example, Valerie has represented parents alleged to have sexually abused their own children and where their children are expressing extreme sexualised behaviours.
Valerie handles with appropriate sensitivity cases involving personality and mental heath issues.
Represented a mother in the pool of possible perpetrators for deliberate infliction of a serious wound on her infant. This eight day finding of fact case involved obtaining and analysing corroborative evidence of many text and social media messages.
Acted for a mother alleged to have caused a range of inflicted fractures or at least that she failed to protect her child from these injuries having occurred over a period of time. The latter case involved cross-examination of a consultant radiologist and a consultant paediatrician as to causation.
Acted for a local authority who have brought care proceedings following a chaotic set of home circumstances. There followed a range of professional assessments and ultimately a programme of rehabilitation with suitable social work support took place.
Represented a guardian who scrutinised and challenged local authority care plans requiring effective advocacy to articulate her views.
Represented a local authority in a long running case involving five respondent parties. At the time when protective measures were taken, the mother had been arrested for neglect and public order offences involving her and her then partner, along with her having poor mental health, which had impacted on the home conditions for the children. There was also substance misuse, historic domestic abuse and breach of a safety plan.
Represented a local authority in a case where the threshold was required to be amended. A viability assessment on the father was negative because of his minimisation of drug use. The parents displayed a lack of engagement. The mother pursued a mother and baby unit placement. The mother before the court did not actively oppose continued removal of her child.
In an ongoing complex care case, Valerie represents a vulnerable mother who is undergoing an independent social work assessment as to the prevalent risks of her caring for her daughter on her own; and what additional safeguarding measures can realistically be put in place, in the medium to longer term, to protect the child which would enable her to remain in the care of either of her parents. This is listed for a five-day contested final hearing at the end of 2024.
Represents a mother facing care and placement orders against a background of the most serious domestic abuse wherein her team have applied for an independent social worker’s assessment of ‘risk’. This case is complicated by parallel criminal proceedings, in respect of which full police disclosure is being sought.
Represented a young father who faced threshold allegations of serious harm to his child involving expert evidence from a consultant paediatrician as to causation.
Represented a father whose partner had a significant history spanning a long time of involvement with local authorities. Their newborn and subject child was the subject of many assessments as to prospective risk and his ability to protect which involved cooperative working with the LA culminating in a positive outcome and rehabilitation subject to safeguarding plans.
Represented a father who at the request of a local authority assumed the care of his child when urgent care proceedings were instigated due to concerns regarding another child in the household. The client was the subject of a positive viability assessment. There then followed a fact-finding hearing to which he was a party involving a range of expert paediatric evidence, and a contested final hearing.
Acted for the guardian in a complex and long running case of factitious disorder and factitious disorder imposed on another which ranged from the fact-finding hearing – involving expert evidence which Valerie called on behalf of the child – to the final hearing.
Represented the guardian and child in a sensitive case where the court has paid regard to Practice Direction 3AA re the participation of vulnerable persons.
Valerie’s role was to call the experts and the guardian, to cross examine the lay party and to liaise.
Valerie has a broad experience of private law Children Act proceedings involving residence, contact, Prohibited Steps Orders, Specific Issue Orders, applications to relocate both internally and internationally and Article 15 Brussels ii.
She able to represent her client’s case in a persuasive manner and achieve the optimum outcome.
She has particular experience in the most complex cases involving a Rule 16.4 appointment of a Children’s Guardian or NYAS worker.
Recent experience of representing a mother in a contested High Court wardship against leading counsel, involving complex DNA and paternity issues with an international element.
Acted for a vulnerable mother in a two day finding of fact hearing in which Special Measures were required so that mother could give her evidence from behind a screen. Comprehensive findings were made in her favour.
Acted for a mother who was assisted by an interpreter in a case involving complex police information and immigration/Home Office issues. The client had been the subject of many years of the most serious domestic and sexual violence.
Represented a mother in a complex case involving special measures. Each party was assisted by an interpreter.
At the initial contested fact-finding hearing, Valerie sought and obtained serious findings against the father of controlling and coercive behaviour.
There was a further issue as to the father’s immigration status and there had been communication with the Home Office in this regard.
Cafcass then reported and the case was listed for a contested final hearing. The issues then were whether there should be any direct contact between the child and her father, indirect contact and the client’s application for an order under section 91 (14) Children Act 1989.
The court ordered that the child live with the client and not have any direct contact with her father, but he could send her indirect contact 4 times a year.
A section 91 (14) order was made for a period of five years meaning that the father was not entitled to make any application for an order under the Children Act 1989 without first obtaining the prior leave of the court, with all applications for leave, or future case management and hearings, being allocated to the trial judge where this was possible.
Valerie is currently in demand to deal with cases of child abduction and international relocation. These often involve a parent taking a child abroad without the agreement of the other parent. Valerie is skilled in acting rapidly to get a child back – or to defend a parent raising the answers of acquiescence or grave risk or intolerable circumstances should the parent and child return.
Valerie represented a mother who unilaterally without the consent of the father and in breach of court orders took their young daughter out of the jurisdiction to Scotland. Pursuant to section 41 of the Family Law Act 1986 Part 1, the English court was satisfied that it had jurisdiction to make orders because the child had been habitually resident in England all her life and had been removed from England by Valerie’s client to Scotland without the consent of the father who had parental responsibility for her.
Client applied for a Child Arrangements Order (‘CAO’) to confirm that her son lived with her as he had done since the parties separated for the purposes of entry to Australia. By the making of the CAO, the mother recognised that she required the court’s permission for her son to relocate with her to Australia. This was a hybrid hearing with the father attending by CVP from overseas. The parties were not agreed.
The court found it was in the boy’s interest to live with his mother in accordance with the CAO but did not find it necessary, proportionate or practical to make a defined contact order. The order confirmed inter alia that pursuant to section 13 of the Children Act 1989 the client had permission for her son to relocate to Australia.
I have written articles for Family Law, the Local Government Website and Justice of the Peace.
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