17 December 2015 - Article
Steven Kempster
Partner | London
Steven is a partner in the trust and succession disputes team.
He specialises in the resolution of disputes relating to the formation or administration of trusts and estates in a UK and international context. Recent cases have included disputes relating to trusts and estates in the UK, Channel Islands, Isle of Man, Switzerland, Gibraltar, Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, Singapore, Cayman Islands and Bermuda. He also advises on charity law matters, including dispute resolution where UK charities are involved.
Steven has been described by Chambers Global as ‘a ‘leading figure’ and ‘esteemed litigator’. In 2017 and 2018 Steven was nominated in Legal Weeks Private Client Global Elite of international advisers. In 2011, Steven was included in The Lawyer magazine’s annual ‘Hot 100’ list of lawyers ‘who have consistently demonstrated nimbleness and innovation over the last 12 months’.
Track record
Admissions
Publications
Memberships
Talks
We advised a beneficiary of a trust who was in dispute with another beneficiary and the trustee who was holding shares in a luxury fashion brand worth over €30 million. Court proceedings were ongoing in England and Italy, involving our London and Milan offices, before the trustee was successfully replaced and the other issues between the parties compromised in 2017 to avoid publicity over the businesses involved.
Advising a blue-chip offshore trust company on its involvement in English divorce proceedings concerning attacks on trusts worth over £25 million. We handled the disclosure issues for the trustee and eventually the case was concluded without the trustee being formally joined to the English proceedings.
Our lawyers brought the highest value Inheritance Act claim to date in Wooldridge v Wooldridge (2016). We were acting for a widow who sought to increase provision under her husband’s will after his death in a helicopter accident. The will had been ‘homemade’, written without legal advice, and our client felt that her husband had intended to leave her a greater share of his assets.
England and Wales, 2000
Wealth Management Spotlight on Contentious Trusts, Spears Magazine, September 2017
Editor and contributing author to Oxford University Press’ International Trust Disputes
Contributing author to International Trust Precedents published by Longmans
Association of Contentious Trust and Probate Specialists
Charity Law Association
Society of Trusts and Estates Practitioners
Panellist - ‘Wealthy families in dispute’, Private client dining club, London - May 2018
STEP, Hong Kong branch, lecture on ‘Trust and divorce’ - February 2018
‘Trust planning in divorce’, Isle of man conference - September 2017
Education
Languages
- English
Dates
Joined
2014
Partner
2014
