Anita Shepherd
Senior Family Solicitor
Anita is a senior family solicitor consultant. Anita has 23 years’ experience in all aspects of family law, mainly multi-value and complex high value financial matters alongside difficult children cases and is a Legal 500 recommended Family Lawyer.
As a practicing collaborative lawyer and member of Resolution she is committed to promoting alternatives to court proceedings to resolve relationship disputes thereby providing clients with greater choice of procedure to resolve disputes.
Anita is a Resolution accredited specialist in Advanced Financial Provision and Domestic Abuse. Anita is passionate about achieving healthy and sustainable outcomes for her clients and is well known for her problem solving skills. She is renowned for her ability to devise solutions to take the heat out of complex and heightened family disputes.
Her client base often includes leading individuals in the sporting and media industry, financial and corporate services and world leading medical consultants and university academics.
Areas of Specialism:
Divorce, dissolution of civil partnerships and nullity and judicial separation proceedings
Financial provision in the above proceedings as well as in circumstances where there has been an overseas divorce
Variation, enforcement or set aside of existing financial orders
Unmarried separation issues (including TOLATA applications)
Separation Agreements and Living Together Agreement
Pre and post-nuptial agreements
Child residence and contact disputes
Paternity disputes
Applications for parental rights and step parent rights
Child relocation and international child abduction disputes
Third party rights as interveners in financial remedy proceedings
Change of name for adults and children
Child maintenance including CMS and Schedule 1 claims where the CMS does not have jurisdiction
Domestic violence/abuse injunctions and harassment cases
Using the collaborative process to reach an agreement in all family law issues
Preparing and supporting clients during the mediation process by way of Lawyer Supported Mediation
Career Highlights:
Acting for a husband (through the official solicitor) who had a degenerative brain stem disease, acquire a fair share of the £6.6m matrimonial assets which were placed in a trust to meet the husband’s complex care needs.
Securing the return of children to the care of their mother following their abduction by their paternal family where search and recovery orders were required to achieve the safe return of the children with the involvement of multi-agency support such as police, social services, border control and out of hours court service.
Represented the wife of a former Premier League Footballer in divorce, finances and children proceedings. The case involved disputes concerning paternity, asset freezing injunctions, prohibited steps and specific issue orders as well as the internal UK relocation of the children.
Membership & Recognition
- Member of Resolution and advanced accredited specialist. Member of Manchester Collaborative law POD
- A recommended family lawyer in 2020 and 2021 Legal 500
- Qualified as a Solicitor of England and Wales on 17 May 1999.
