Expertise

Sarah is a highly experienced family lawyer with expertise across all areas of family law. She advises clients on the full spectrum of complex family matters, including divorce, financial settlements, and children disputes. Sarah often handles cases for professionals with complex remuneration structures, long-term performance-based incentive assets and matters with an international element, advising on issues of jurisdiction and disputes involving overseas assets and children.

She works closely with clients to navigate challenging and often sensitive circumstances, delivering clear, strategic advice tailored to their individual needs. Her practice also includes advising on pre-nuptial and post-nuptial agreements, helping couples protect their assets and plan for the future with confidence. In addition, she assists unmarried couples with preparing cohabitation agreements and related issues, ensuring their rights and interests are safeguarded. Sarah is dedicated to achieving practical, effective outcomes while providing exceptional client care throughout every stage of a matter.

Sarah is a member of the department’s Professional Practices Group and Children Law Group.

Experience

• Represented a father in a highly contentious child arrangements dispute involving complex issues, including allegations of serious and sustained domestic abuse
• Acted for a wife in financial proceedings, advising on financial claims where significant issues arose in relation to disclosure and the treatment of non-matrimonial assets.
• Advised a wife in relation to both financial claims and child arrangements proceedings, involving complex issues surrounding the proposed relocation of the children to another jurisdiction and substantial non-matrimonial wealth
• Represented a husband in financial remedy proceedings where there was a significant disparity in the parties’ incomes (with the husband’s income received via a complex remuneration package), successfully negotiating a clean break settlement
• Represented a wife in financial proceedings whose husband had significant business interests, some of which were held by way of long-term incentive plans, securing for the wife a settlement which entitled her to share in the husband’s future receipt
• Acted for a father of a 4-year-old boy, successfully opposing the mother’s application to relocate out of the jurisdiction with the child and, at the same time, securing an equal shared care arrangement.

Recognition

Legal 500 2023: “Outstanding strength and depth in relation to financial claims on divorce, Stewarts Law in Leeds are in a league of their own… Sarah Harvey was a pleasure to work with.”

Sarah has been recognised by leading legal directories, having received praise in The Legal 500 and being ranked as an Associate to Watch by Chambers and Partners for her work in family law. Chambers and Partners stated: “Sarah Harvey has strong expertise in all manner of private family law, including both finance and children cases.”

Chambers and Partners 2022: “Sarah is incredibly empathetic but also incredibly thorough and able to apply her forensic skills to the material she gathers…An excellent associate who is totally on top of the detail.”

Career

Sarah graduated from the University of Nottingham in 2012. She completed her Legal Practice Course at BPP in Leeds, achieving a distinction. She joined Stewarts as a newly qualified solicitor in 2016.

Accreditations and Memberships

Sarah is a member of Resolution (West and North Yorkshire).

Publications and Media

• Safety of children must not be compromised in court reforms – Stewarts
• Poor conduct in financial remedy proceedings can lead to an adverse costs order – Stewarts