What they say
"… a safe pair of hands ... easy to work with when going through a stressful period of time."
Legal 500 UK 2021
What they say
"Joanna is approachable, professional and very easy to work with. She is a fast thinking and commercially minded lawyer who can think outside the box and offer alternative solutions"
Jolyon Bennett, MD of Gusto Telecom Solutions
Joanna is a Senior Associate in the
Family and Relationships team, based in Brighton. Her background is in commercial litigation, having trained with the firm and qualified into the Technology and Media Dispute Resolution team in 2007, before moving on to specialise in family law. She is, therefore, uniquely qualified to bring a commercial and pragmatic approach to matrimonial financial cases which involve complex business and overseas assets.
Joanna advises clients on a wide range of private family matters including divorce, financial disputes and injunction proceedings. She is regularly instructed to deal with complex and high net worth divorce cases involving trusts, businesses, high value property and assets located outside the UK.
In additon to financial cases, Joanna also has extensive experience in relation to private children law disputes (including applications under Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989 and leave to remove applications) and domestic violence (including applications for non-molestation orders and occupation orders).
Joanna has a wealth of experience advising on the protection of family wealth through pre-nuptial, post-nuptial and cohabitation agreements.
Joanna has built up a strong network in Brighton and the surrounding area. This, combined with her particular skillset, has enabled the team to carve out a niche as a market leader for complex matrimonial cases in the region.
Work highlights
- Advising on a highly contentious, and particuarly complex, Schedule 1 Application involving a shareholder's dispute and difficulties surrounding contact arrangements.
- Issuing an urgent Schedule 1 Application to re-establish regular, unsupervised contact for a Mother and her three young children.
- Securing a financial settlement on divorce where the parties are joint owners of seven properties as well as high value pensions.
- Advising a client during a very acrimonious breakdown of a marriage. In particular, advising the client in relation to high value properties and companies in both the UK and USA.
- Advising and securing financial settlement for a Wife in circumstances where the Husband was refusing to provide financial disclosure in respect of his very successful businesses.
- Advising a party in proceedings relating to the joint ownership of a property; securing the sale of the property and division of the proceeds of sale in our client's favour on the basis of Trust law.
- Preparing a pre-nuptial agreement; ring-fencing our client's various properties and pensions in the event of the parties' divorce.
- Advising and preparing a cohabitation agreement for a couple who do not intend to get married, but who wish to document their common intentions to protect their assets.
Joanna's memberships and associations
- Joanna is a member of Resolution, a national organisation of family lawyers committed to working with families and individuals to resolve issues in a non-confrontational and constructive way.