About
Sarah Phillips is a Consultant Solicitor in Goodman Ray’s Divorce and Matrimonial Finance Department, based in Brighton. She advises clients from a wide range of backgrounds on financial arrangements arising from divorce and relationship breakdown.
Sarah has extensive experience handling complex financial cases involving company assets, inherited wealth, family trusts, and allegations of non-disclosure. She is also highly skilled in resolving financial disputes through negotiation and alternative dispute resolution, helping clients avoid contested court proceedings wherever possible.
In addition to her financial remedies work, Sarah specialises in complex children proceedings. She regularly advises clients in cases involving allegations of domestic abuse, including coercive and controlling behaviour, DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) tactics, and alienating behaviours. Many of her cases require the instruction of jointly appointed experts with specialist expertise in mental health, trauma, and neurodiversity. Sarah also provides guidance to clients with regard to setting boundaries around communication and co-parenting.
Sarah works closely with counsel, financial neutrals, and family consultants to provide her clients with a holistic service.
Sarah holds a degree in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh, which developed her passion for persuasive and effective written argument and advocacy. She later studied law at City University and qualified as a solicitor in 2007 while raising her young daughter.
Sarah spent the first decade of her career working in a thriving high street practice in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, undertaking principally publicly funded work. Sarah was a regular advocate at Tunbridge Wells County Court representing her clients on urgent domestic violence injunctions and emergency applications in relation to children.
Sarah then moved to a regional firm based in Uckfield/Brighton for three years, where she continued to focus on matrimonial finances and private law children, before moving to another regional firm in Brighton in 2016 where she was made a partner in 2021.
