Divorce Diva
Last Year – 34
Deborah Chambers KC has been a prominent barrister specialising in relationship property and trust law, achieving a number of trust-busting and other legal wins for clients.
A high-charging lawyer in both court and at billing time, she has been a prominent member of the bar for some years she has conducted seminars on her specialty areas of practice and written a handbook on domestic property law and a guide to trusts along with other articles and papers.
She worked at both Meredith Connell and Russell McVeagh before working briefly in Scotland as a proculator fiscal and joining the Bar in 1989. She became a QC in 2007, but her public star rose with the marriage to the late Supreme Court Justice Sir Robert Chambers who died suddenly in 2013 and who was recently remembered in a special ceremony at the Auckland High Court.
Having accumulated the entitlement to “Lady Chambers”, a title she uses sparingly after her late husband was posthumously knighted, she became embroiled in legal proceedings involving her late husband’s son, a Silicon Valley software engineer.
The case saw the High Court reject much of the son’s claim for a payout from the late Judge’s substantial estate, but ruled that Ms Chambers was a ‘constructive trustee’ for her stepson, with an obligation to act in his best interests.
Other cases in the trust and relationship property area, among others, have also shown the ability and sheer grit of a woman who was born of working class parents in a State house and risen to the top of the profession, earning respect and privilege, without forgetting her origins or sense of commitment to justice.
She is a member and served as a past-President of the Auckland Women Lawyers’ Association, a member of the Auckland Law School’s Innovation and Development Fund Campaign Committee, the New Zealand Law Society Practice Approval Committee and a member of the Advisory Board for the New Zealand Women’s Law Journal.
