Sally Terris

Main areas of practice:

• Trusts
• Inheritance Act
• Financial Orders on Divorce, including ‘third party’ interests
• Children: Abduction, Adoption, Private law, Public law
• Cohabitation
• Domestic Violence
• Foreign Marriages & Divorces
• Landlord & Tenant

Sally practices in trusts and Inheritance Act cases, family (money and children), and in landlord and tenant. Understandably, she is much in demand for private clients, local authorities and public bodies including police and regulatory work; she also continues to act for meritorious publicly-funded parties, parents, children’s guardians and the Official Solicitor. She has a wealth of successful experience of acting for grandparents and other extended family members in care and private law Children Act cases.

Sally is a fine example of an advocate who masters the most complex of facts and evidence and always aims to explain them in easily understandable terms to her various lay clients. She is recommended as a ‘fighter’ in the UK Legal 500, where she has been listed for the past decade. She also prides herself on giving clear, realistic and reliable advice on terms of settlement.

Recent successes include: acting for a third party beneficiary in a complex divorce and trusts case where Sally’s pleadings and case summary brought about a concluded settlement in her elderly lay client’s favour, and the collapse of the divorce case at an early stage; representing the third party beneficiaries in a trusts and farms divorce case; fully representing a high-flying legal professional (and financial remedy judge) in a middle money divorce case with allegations of gross misconduct; successfully representing the wife of a divorce lawyer in a middle money case; representing the beneficiary of a trust fund in a complex High Court contact and residence dispute; representing numerous lay clients under disabilities pursuant to the involvement of the Official Solicitor and/or the Court of Protection; representing grandparents in a long-running, complex care case where (despite the recommendations of the Children’s Guardian) the children concerned were placed with Sally’s lay clients on a special guardianship order; arguing for the rare discharge of a parental responsibility order, together with a highly unusual four-year Section 91(14) prohibition; gaining permission to appeal in a public law case on behalf of a parent on the gravest imaginable facts; giving a very carefully considered paper advice in a middle money divorce which enabled an elderly, frail lay client to make the right decision for her on full information.

Sally is instructed in a wide range of family trusts cases, including TOLATA, and ancillary relief matters. She is also very regularly briefed in Children Act cases. Many of Sally’s cases, both property and children, have a cultural or international element; and she is frequently asked for advice and representation in cases of third party interests, multiple properties and family businesses, farms and pensions.

Sally has acted in a number of high profile cases, in the High Court and Court of Appeal, where she is known for her courage, tenacity, plain speaking and realism.

Sally has acted in a large number of care cases involving baby-shaking, fictitious and/or induced illness, personality disorders, complex and/or conflicting expert evidence and sexual abuse. She has extensive experience of difficult contact and residence applications including those involving a Rule 16 Children’s Guardian, and care cases involving complex medical issues.

Public law work includes assessments, attachment disorders, baby shaking, conflicting expert evidence, complex radiological and/or neurological evidence, depression, domestic violence, fictitious and/or induced illness, learning disabled parents, ‘perpetrator’ cases, personality disorders and sexual abuse.

Extensive experience of difficult contact and residence disputes, including the appointment of a Children’s Guardian under Rule 16 and findings of fact in cases of alleged domestic violence.