Victoria Walters

Victoria deals with proceedings involving the arrangements for children and specialises in helping clients deal with complex issues such as domestic abuse, social services involvement, care proceedings and adoption.

Victoria represents grandparents and other family members such as aunts and uncles in Special Guardianship cases.

Victoria also deals with financial matters on divorce and acts in complex cases involving high net worth assets and pensions.

She is experienced in dealing with military divorces and cases involving third-party intervenors in financial divorce cases.

Notable Family cases

• Care Proceedings
  

  Representing a vulnerable mother in care proceedings to successfully keep her child in her care. Social services changed their mind from seeking to remove the child during the court case to supporting the mother to keep the child.

• Special Guardianship Order
  

  Obtaining an Order that a grandchild was to live with her grandparents against the Local Authority’s (social services) wishes in care proceedings. A Special Guardianship Order was made that the grandchild live with her grandparents for the rest of her childhood.

• Care Proceedings
  

  Representing a parent in care proceedings accused of causing serious injuries to their young child. After careful reading of the medical evidence and arguments in court it was found that the parent did not cause the injuries and the child was reconciled into that parent’s care.

• Step-parent Adoption
  

  Representing in stepparent adoption cases, both to obtain stepparent adoption orders and to oppose stepparent adoption orders.

• Child Abduction
  

  Urgently obtaining Orders for a child to be returned to their mother after being abducted by their father – a foreign national who held the child’s passport. Orders made that the child was to be returned immediately, the child was to live with her mother, that the father’s colleagues at his workplace provide any information they held about the child’s whereabouts, that the child’s passport was to be held by the court. Liaising with the police to ensure they had the Orders, who recovered the child to her mother’s care.

• Child Arrangements Order
  

  An Order that children remain living with their father made in a case involving the mother making allegations of domestic abuse and raising the father’s mental health as an issue.

• Financial Matter
  

  Acting for a client to obtain the return of a large amount of money she had provided to her daughter and son-in law to help them purchase a house during their marriage. The court ordered that that the client’s money was to be re-paid before any other money was divided between the daughter and son-in-law.

• Financial Order
  

  Financial Order after divorce acting for a vulnerable client to obtain a Pension Sharing Order for her ex-husband’s military pension after they had been divorced for 15 years. No financial order had already been made. Urgent freezing injunctions were made by the court to stop the pension being paid to the husband and an agreed Order was reached that that the husband would share his pension with his ex-wife.

• Domestic Abuse
  

  Acting for clients to obtain Non-Molestation Orders to protect them from domestic abuse and harassment by family members and Occupation Orders to allow clients to remain in or return to their homes.