Katherine Cook

Practice Areas

Katherine specialises in financial claims following the breakdown of relationships. She is noted for her handling of cases that are often high-profile and reputationally sensitive and which engage issues of valuation, tax, non-disclosure, offshore trust structures, and the status of agreements. Katherine is recognised as a “go-to for complicated cases with an international element”, particularly those cases involving issues of jurisdiction and forum non conveniens. She has been instructed as an expert witness on English law in South Africa and provided advice and/or representation in the Cayman Islands, the BVI, the UAE, and Gibraltar.

Katherine is a trained mediator and sits as an early neutral evaluator, most frequently as a private FDR Judge, where she brings to bear her “fantastic” and “user-friendly” manner to help parties reach an agreement without further costly litigation.

Career

Katherine was called to the Bar in 2007.

She is a graduate of Christ Church, Oxford (BA Hons Jurisprudence) and Emmanuel College, Cambridge (LLM).

Katherine was a Levitt Scholar and Lord Denning Scholar at Lincoln’s Inn and undertook a Pegasus Scholarship in Washington DC, USA

Professional Memberships

Family Law Bar Association

Publications

Katherine authored the chapters on jurisdiction in the latest edition of Rayden and Jackson on Divorce and Family Matters (the leading family law practitioners’ text). She also lectures widely both in-house and for legal training providers.

Work Highlights

In every case, Katherine’s focus is aimed at achieving an early favourable settlement, the details of which are formalised efficiently and discreetly. Her cases which are resolved by contested hearing feature regularly in the law reports and address issues across the full matrimonial finance spectrum, ranging from the treatment of non-matrimonial assets (WX v HX [2021] EWFC 14, in which Katherine was the only junior instructed in a case involving four silks), to Part III proceedings brought in this country subsequent to a foreign divorce (AG v VD [2021] EWFC 9).

Industry Sector Expertise

Financial remedies

Nuptial agreements (including drafting)

Claims after foreign divorce under Part III of the MPA 1984

Financial provision for children under Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989

Enforcement and variation of court orders

Claims under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975

Jurisdiction and forum non conveniens disputes

Early Neutral Evaluation

Languages Spoken

Conversational Spanish speaker.