Profile

We have a wealth of experience spanning over three decades in this area. We provide complete advice to individuals, families and trustees and most importantly we have perfected our competence in the art of wealth preservation and loss mitigation on behalf of our clients, in Nigeria and the United Kingdom.

Our private client practice is consistently centered on family and divorce, probate and estate administration, as well as all estate and trust matters.

Key Services

We have developed specialised expertise in the following areas:

• Separation of unmarried and married couples either contractually or judicially
• Financial settlements on dissolution of a marriage, including issues of jurisdiction, contact and residence of children, and their removal from the jurisdiction
• Advising and acting for offshore companies and trustees in connection with their joinder to family proceedings and the enforcement of any awards against them by the Nigerian courts.
• Obtaining the grant of Probate and Letters of administration
• Strict enforcement of wills and trusts
• Post death taxes/charges mitigation
• Trust and estate disputes.

Recent Work

The Alakija Case
On behalf of Trustees in charge of a fifty million dollar family estate we successfully sued beneficiaries who acted wrongly as executors/trustees de son tort. This involved complex issues relating to the appointment and powers of trustees and administrators.

Breach of trust
On behalf of the beneficiaries of a prominent Nigerian who died intestate we sued a court appointed special administrator who acted ultra vires in the exercise of her duties. This case touches on matters relating to breach of trust, removal of trustee and other relief’s on grounds of flagrant bias.

Complex international divorce case
This involved a complex application for the dissolution of marriage celebrated in Nigeria.  However the client being domiciled in the Bahamas was unable to seek a divorce in either country. Our involvement culminated in persuading the courts to permit the grant of dissolution, particularly in view of the complex circumstances of the case. This involved a review of divorce laws both in the two countries and a reconciliation of issues involved in the grant of divorce.