Chambers lists only two lawyers based abroad in its UAE family law table this year, and Aramas International Lawyers holds one of the two places for the second year running.
Chambers and Partners published the 2026 edition of its High Net Worth Guide on 23 July, and the same name appears on both sides of the London to Gulf corridor. Samara Iqbal, founder and director of Aramas International Lawyers, is ranked in the United Arab Emirates table for Family/Matrimonial, in the section the guide reserves for expertise based abroad, and in Band 5 of the UK-wide table for Family/Matrimonial Finance. It is her second consecutive year in both, and the firm announced the recognition last week.
The Emirati entry is the scarcer of the two. Chambers researches more than 55 countries for the guide, and in the UAE its table for foreign-based family practitioners carries two names: Alexandra Tribe of Expatriate Law, listed for eight years, and Iqbal, listed for two. Chambers describes her as a family practitioner with working knowledge of both the British and Emirati frameworks and a trusted adviser to British expatriates in the Emirates. Client feedback published in the guide points to clear and commercially focused advice on complex cross-border financial matters, early identification of problems, and an ability to hold the confidence of demanding clients through emotionally difficult cases.
Aramas International Lawyers was founded in 2019 and works from Manchester, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Riyadh, handling expatriate divorce, financial settlements, children matters and cross-border disputes involving Sharia principles. The firm is separately ranked in the Chambers UK Guide 2026 for Family/Matrimonial Law in the North West, also its second consecutive year, and says it has been accredited as registered wills draftsmen with the DIFC Courts Wills Service Centre in Dubai. Iqbal has practised exclusively in family law since 2006.
The market the courts built
Abu Dhabi has spent five years building the demand behind that listing. Figures from the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department put registrations at the Civil Family Court at roughly 53,000 civil marriage contracts and 21,000 civil wills since Law No. 14 of 2021 took effect. Annual volumes rose from about 5,400 contracts in 2022 to 12,000 in 2023, 16,200 in 2024 and 19,000 in 2025, an increase of 17 percent in the final year. Gulf News reported in November that the court had drawn users from around 120 nationalities.
The divorce route is built for speed. WAM has described a no-fault civil divorce completed in a single session within 30 days, with a financial expert appointed to calculate entitlements and joint custody applying automatically. The court heard 640 civil divorce cases in 2025. For most separating couples that pace is the point. For wealthy families with assets in more than one country, it raises the value of advice taken before the first filing, because a decree issued in weeks settles the forum well before the money is settled.
Two systems, one family
The population producing those cases is also the one moving fastest. Henley & Partners gave the UAE a wealth mobility competitiveness score of 85.3 in its 2026 report, among the highest in the framework, and called the country the leading destination for millionaire migration over the past two years. The United Kingdom scored 68.3 and was placed among competitive jurisdictions under pressure, after the abolition of the non-dom regime, changes to inheritance tax treatment and the closure of the Tier 1 investor visa. British citizens now account for almost half of all applications the firm processes from UK addresses, against 8 percent in 2018.
Relocation rarely severs the older jurisdiction. Part III of the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984 allows a spouse to seek financial provision from an English court after a foreign divorce, and the Court of Appeal confirmed in September 2025, in the second Potanina v Potanin appeal, that a wife with a sufficient connection to England could pursue such a claim years after a foreign settlement. A family with a home in Dubai, a property in London and children in British schools needs both systems read together, which is the position the two Chambers tables describe.
That corridor is still early in its development, and the honest measure is the docket. Against 19,000 civil marriages in 2025 the Abu Dhabi court heard 640 divorces, so the contested Emirati market remains small, and the largest London matrimonial mandates sit in a separate ultra high net worth table. The direction of both numbers, and of the wealth behind them, favours the practitioners already listed at each end. This year the guide had room for two names in the UAE. A firm founded in 2019 holds one of them.
