Handling Complex Family Trusts and Beneficiary Disputes

Paula Fry

Counsel at Appleby (Guernsey) LLP

Advocate Paula Fry, Counsel, is an established and dual-qualified lawyer of 23 years’ call, (also TEP qualified) of which thirteen years have been spent in Guernsey building a wide-ranging private client and trust practice. Her work covers both non-contentious and contentious trust and private client practice as well as corporate and finance work.

She has a wealth of experience and has, in particular, been involved in numerous re-structuring exercises, a number of momentous decision applications (including applications relating to a deferred prosecution agreement and critical trustee decisions), various mistake applications, trustee and protector removal applications, various applications and advice in relation to the defective appointment of trustees, a significant court application concerning the construction of a will and a novel court application in relation to the rectification of companies’ share registers.

Paula is well acquainted with a very broad spectrum of trust and estate related matters, including the establishment of trusts, foundations, private trust companies, the preparation of wills and the administration of estates. She also advises trustees, protectors, beneficiaries, enforcers and private banks on all aspects of trusts.

Richard Field

Partner, Dispute Resolution at Appleby (Guernsey) LLP

Richard is a Partner in the Dispute Resolution team at Appleby, specialising in corporate, trust and commercial litigation and regulatory matters. His regulatory focus is on data protection (including cyber), AML and compliance, technology and eGaming. Richard is one of the global leads for Privacy and Data Protection at Appleby and is the Guernsey lead for the firm’s Technology and Innovation practice group. He was described by Legal 500 as “the go-to lawyer for data protection matters”. He is also the only Band 1 ranked lawyer for fintech in Guernsey.

Richard has acted for a range of local and global institutions on complex, cross-border disputes involving funds, banking and investment relationships and trusts. Many of the cases he has worked on involve fraud, asset-tracing and applications for injunctive relief, or regulatory issues (such as enforcement, AML, bribery or sanctions), often resulting in ground-breaking judgments, both in Guernsey and England. He isChair of GACO (Guernsey Association of Compliance Officers) and involved in the current review of changes to Guernsey’s financial crime regime and preparations for the island’s MoneyVal assessment.