Natasha Slabas

Work highlights

• RE C (A CHILD) [2021] EWFC 32: SCHEDULE 1 1989 - a jurisdictional dispute between Monaco and England and Wales concerning future financial provision for a child. Successfully represented the mother in bringing and continuing her claim in this jurisdiction on the basis of the Maintenance Regulation.
• MB v TB (Art 13 Alleged Risk of Oppressive Litigation) [2019] EWHC 1019 (Fam) - abduction case where we attempted to use conduct of a litigant in a previous case as evidence to support the defence of grave risk of harm as a bar to ordering a child’s return to Israel.
• RJ v Tigipko [2019] EWHC 448 (Fam) – obtained an order from the High Court for publication of the names of the mother and maternal grandfather in circumstances where they were found to have abducted the children to Ukraine, in a bid to encourage their return to their rightful jurisdiction of England and Wales. The decision was unprecedented owing to the children’s whereabouts being known, as previous orders disclosing with abductors names were only made in circumstances where children were missing.
• Re J (Children: Permission to Remove from Jurisdiction) [2018] EWCA Civ 1372 – in the Court of Appeal, reversed a decision that the mother be permitted to temporarily return with the children to the Ukraine on the basis she ambushed her application on the father and that despite the Ukraine being a signatory of the Hague Conventions 1980 and 1996, there was a real risk of their not being returned owing to the findings of her past conduct. The Court of Appeal additionally refused the mother’s application for permission to appeal against the refusal of her application to move the children permanently to live in the Ukraine.
• S and V (Children - Leave to Remove) [2018] EWFC 26 - successfully resisted an application brought by a mother for leave to remove children permanently to the Ukraine
• S v S (Relocation) [2017] EWHC 2345 (Fam) – leave to remove application regarding a case concerning the children’s move to Switzerland with their father. Despite the court acceding to the father’s application to remove the children to live with him in Switzerland, he was ordered to pay the mother’s costs summarily assessed at £150,000 owing to his egregious conduct by facilitating the children’s retention of their own lawyers behind their mother’s backs.
• A v B [2015] EWHC 1562 (Fam) – resisted a summary return application brought by a mother pursuant to the Hague Convention on the basis the child was habitually resident in England and Wales and because the agreement reached was that the child was to be conceived on the basis it would live with the father and his wife in England and Wales.
• Tower Hamlets London BC v M & Ors [2015] EWHC 869 (Fam) – one of the first cases at the Family Division of the High Court, London, involving attempts by minors to join ISIS in Syria.