Harriet is an Associate in the Family team and advises on all aspects of family law. She has a depth of experience of contentious and non-contentious family law work and specialises in both the financial consequences of marital and relationship breakdown, and children matters including surrogacy and donor agreements.
Harriet has worked on cases requiring complex valuations of businesses and has experience of trusts in family proceedings. She has also dealt with high-net worth cases where existing pre-nuptial agreements have been challenged. In respect of children work, she is accustomed to high conflict cases and cases involving domestic abuse and coercive control (including where the Local Authority has been asked to report on welfare issues) as well as relocation (international and domestic). Before qualification, she spent two years working for barristers in Paris specialising in Financial Crime.
Harriet regularly contributes to legal journals such as the Family Law Journal. She is a member of Resolution, an organisation which campaigns for improvements to family justice and recently was part of a panel addressing the YRes National Conference on new developments in Surrogacy and Modern Families law. In 2024 she co-authored a chapter of the Resolution Handbook examining international considerations on spousal maintenance.
Harriet graduated from the University of Cambridge and qualified as a solicitor in March 2019. She joined Mishcon de Reya in 2024.
Key Experience
- Re TT v Registrar General for England and Wales [2019] EWHC 2384 (Fam). This case ruled that a transgender man who has given birth to a child should be recorded on the child's birth certificate as "mother";
- Acting for the wife of a celebrity musician with assets of £250m (including an airline) in a financial remedy dispute;
- Acting for the mother in a Child Abduction and Child Arrangements case where the mother relied on Article 13(b) grounds under the Hague Convention 1980 to permit her and the child to remain in England, rather than return to Germany where she maintained that her husband was violent and abusive towards her and her 5 year old child;
- Acting for a husband in a jurisdiction battle between England and Turkey, with multiple trust assets, which also involved MPS and LSPO applications;
- Acting for a husband with inherited assets of £50m who was seeking to rely on a pre-nuptial agreement which the wife challenged on the basis of various vitiating factors including duress and misrepresentation;
- Acting for a husband in complex financial remedy proceedings with illiquid shareholdings which necessitated several business valuations;
- Acting for a mother in a child arrangements matter involving a 5-day fact finding hearing, where the father was the subject of a criminal investigation for alleged child abuse;
- Acting for a celebrity client with assets in multiple jurisdictions, where the Reputation team was also instructed to act on various privacy considerations;
- Acting for the father of a newborn baby in an urgent (successful) peremptory return application which was heard within 5 days of instruction and which resulted in a return order and prohibited steps orders;
- Acting for the father in successfully resisting a relocation application where the child was due to move 11 hours away from the father, who at the time, had equal shared care.
Career History
Associate, Mishcon de Reya LLP
Senior Associate, Family Law Partners
Associate, Russells
Trainee, Penningtons Manches LLP
BPP Law School
University of Cambridge