Ayesha Mary Barbara Vardag (born March 1968) is an English

solicitor A solicitor is a legal practitioner who traditionally deals with most of the legal matters in some jurisdictions. A person must have legally-defined qualifications, which vary from one jurisdiction to another, to be described as a solicitor and ...

and

divorce Divorce (also known as dissolution of marriage) is the process of terminating a marriage or marital union. Divorce usually entails the canceling or reorganizing of the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage, thus dissolving the ...

lawyer.

Early life

Vardag was raised in Oxfordshire, England and studied Law at

Queens' College Queens' College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Queens' is one of the oldest colleges of the university, founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou. The college spans the River Cam, colloquially referred to as the "light s ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

with

Duke of Edinburgh Duke of Edinburgh, named after the city of Edinburgh in Scotland, was a substantive title that has been created three times since 1726 for members of the British royal family. It does not include any territorial landholdings and does not produc ...

award for membership of the

Inner Temple The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional associations for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wal ...

. She took a Masters as a Cambridge Wiener Anspach scholar in European Law at the Université libre de Bruxelles, where she worked on research projects at the

International Court of Justice The International Court of Justice (ICJ; french: Cour internationale de justice, links=no; ), sometimes known as the World Court, is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN). It settles disputes between states in accordanc ...

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...

and at the UN (IAEA) Legal Division in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Legal career

Vardag qualified as a solicitor in 1996 and was initially trained at Linklaters. Ayesha Vardag in Bell Yard - geograph

Prior to becoming a family lawyer, she worked for the New York law firm

Weil, Gotshal & Manges Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP is an American international law firm with approximately 1,100 attorneys, headquartered in New York City. With a gross annual revenue in excess of $1.8 billion, it is among the world's largest law firms according to ' ...

. Vardag's training in matrimonial law was as one of two assistants to

Raymond Tooth Raymond Clive Tooth is a matrimonial and family law lawyer and racehorse owner in the United Kingdom. He represents the wives of male celebrities in high-profile divorces. Education and career Tooth attended several schools before earning his ...

, senior partner at London law firm, Sears Tooth, and co-founder of the International Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, an invitation-only organisation which now consists of over 500 of the world's leading family lawyers. Vardag founded Ayesha Vardag solicitors in 2005, which incorporated as Vardags in May 2010.

Notable cases

In 2010, Vardag represented German heiress Katrin Radmacher in the Radmacher v Granatino case which allowed a prenuptial agreement for the first time in the UK. She and her team won a ruling holding that the prenup drawn up to protect Radmacher's £100 million fortune from her French-born husband Nicolas Granatino, was legally binding. While the case established for the first time that prenups are enforceable in the UK, courts still retain the discretionary right to veto them if they are found to be unfair. She acted for Radmacher throughout the hearings in the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court. Her firm, then named Ayesha Vardag Solicitors, is noted as the instructing solicitors on all three judgments. In 2017, in a four-year-long divorce case complicated by a dispute over whether jurisdiction lay in the UK or

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

, Vardag represented London-based Malaysian former beauty queen, Pauline Chai, whose husband, Malaysian tycoon and non-executive chair of Laura Ashley Holdings, Khoo Kay Peng, wanted the case heard in their original homeland. The Vardags jurisdiction argument was decided in favour of her client. Chai was awarded a settlement of £64 million.

Personal life

Vardag is married to Stephen Bence, a financial consultant who is

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of Vardags. , the couple has five children. A previous marriage ended in divorce. She appeared with Bence in Season 1 Episode 1 of Couples Come Dine With Me and finished last.

References

External links