Two new appointments strengthen contentious private client team’s international offering

Posted: 12/09/2024

Penningtons Manches Cooper’s contentious private client team in London has welcomed two new additions, senior associates Sarah Sussman and Charlotte Finley, in a move that expands its capability for handling international and cross-border matters. 

The contentious private client team currently acts on a wide variety of international and domestic trust and estate related disputes. With an increasing number of client matters involving international assets, trusts, or parties, the addition of Sarah and Charlotte, who bring with them extensive offshore and international litigation experience, will offer clients further specialist knowledge and expertise in this area.

Prior to joining the firm, Sarah practised in New Zealand and the Cayman Islands. She has eight years’ experience, and has acted as lead and junior counsel in the senior courts of both jurisdictions. With particular expertise in cross-border trust disputes and complex, large-scale litigation, her practice focuses on contentious trust issues for high-net-worth individuals and families, including those issues with a multi-jurisdictional and cross-border element. 

Sarah also has experience in dealing with a variety of wills and estate disputes, as well as handling breach of trust claims against trustees and executors, applications to remove and replace trustees and executors, blessing applications, and various challenges to wills.

Charlotte is an English-qualified solicitor who worked at a leading firm in Jersey for over four years before joining the growing Penningtons Manches Cooper team in London. She specialises in complex trust and probate litigation, and has worked on a variety of high-value cross-border disputes, including, for example, advising trustees in the context of divorcing beneficiaries and administrators of an English estate, where the trustee of a connected international charitable trust misappropriated trust funds. 

In the course of her time practising in London and Jersey, Charlotte has acted for a wide range of clients including individuals, trustees and executors, protectors and companies, and is therefore well placed to advise clients with needs spanning multiple jurisdictions. 

Both Sarah and Charlotte will be closely working with Michael Cash, head of the contentious private client team, which is regularly ranked highly in the legal directories. In the latest edition of Chambers High Net Worth, it is noted for its ‘high level of expertise’, while according to The Legal 500 2024, the team is ‘a delight to work with and highly efficient in delivering a product that few if any can match’. Michael himself is ranked in band 1 of Chambers High Net Worth, where he is described as ‘very competent, calm’ and ‘a really good negotiator. There’s a lot of gravitas about him.’

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