Raymond Tooth

Spear’s Review

‘Divorce goes on in the good times and the bad times – human nature doesn’t change.’ So says Sears Tooth’s Raymond Tooth, who has enjoyed a storied 50-plus years in family law. He still believes in the sanctity of marriage and relationships, but offers a word of hard-won wisdom: ‘The best advice is to live together, apart. You have your home, she has her home.’ 

Tooth’s name has long been synonymous with the UK’s toughest divorce wins. A noteworthy case was S & V [2018], a leave-to-remove battle dealing with international kidnapping. Thanks to Tooth, the court allowed publicity around the case in order to persuade the mother to return the children to the UK.

Adviser Profile

Tooth founded Sears Tooth back in 1982. In his early litigations, the lawyer successfully sued the South African government during the apartheid era, and even took on the mafia in Las Vegas. Now, he works exclusively on financial and children matters, and has pearls of wisdom for both: “One should never countenance delay if acting for a person who is seeking a financial settlement. In children cases, however, it is always the aim to do the best for the children concerned and keep the parents on civilised terms.” The solicitor, who was a pioneer of divorce boutiques, received congratulations from the Law Society over 7 years ago for practising for over 50 years. 

“The essential ethos is to analyse the situation as quickly as possible and advise the client of a realistic objective and therefore manage aspiration,” says Tooth. “But, in the words of the famous Victorian poet, Robert Browning: ‘A person’s reach should always exceed their grasp’, and thus to achieve the best settlement reasonably obtainable in financial matters. It is equally important to emphasise that negotiation, if achievable, is better than litigation but one must always be prepared to seek the assistance of the Court if there is no other expedient way of resolution.”