Catherine Costley
UK Guide 2025
Band 4 : Family/Matrimonial Finance: High Net Worth
Band 4
About
Provided by Catherine Costley
Practice Areas
Catherine is a family lawyer working with clients through divorce and separation, advising on the financial arrangements upon entering or leaving a relationship, and all aspects of private children’s law. Pre- or post-nuptial agreements are commonplace in Catherine's cases, partly reflecting the international nature of her client base. Catherine advises regularly concerning financial provisions for unmarried parents under Schedule 1 of the Children Act and regarding child arrangement disputes, specific issues, and the permanent relocation of children.
Catherine's clients are high-net-worth families whose financial affairs involve complexities such as offshore structuring, trusts, and complex corporate structures. Catherine is very familiar with the financial affairs of those working in banking, private equity, finance, or law, but also entrepreneurs, sportsmen and women, actors/writers, and creatives.
Alongside the financial complexities, her clients’ relationships often feature relationship dynamics (for example, personality disorders, control, abuse, and dependency), which Catherine is skilled at navigating with them. After lawyers step away, Catherine focuses on her clients’ lives: their financial security, co-parenting, or independence.
Catherine is listed in the Top 23 Divorce Lawyers on Midult.com’s directory, where she is described as “serenity itself, methodical, thoughtful and kind” but also “progressive” and “fierce”. In Tatler magazine, she is described as “pin sharp”. Catherine is recommended in Spear’s Family Law Index 2024. In 2023, she appeared in Spear’s magazine’s feature on “Modern Family” as part of “a new generation of family lawyers whose stars are in the ascendant or at the apogee of their profession”.