Family Law

Chris Graves , Partnership Member

Chris is Joint Head of the Family Team, a Solicitor Advocate with over thirty years experience in Family Law.

His advocacy experience ranges from Social Security Tribunals to General Courts Martial, including the High Court in a number of cases. He was recently accorded Higher Court advocacy rights of audience in all levels of civil proceedings up to the House of Lords.

Chris is a member of the Law Society's Children Panel, accredited specialist with Resolution in Children Law and Adoption, and a qualified Collaborative lawyer.

He has long held a reputation in Legal Aid, having pioneered Duty Solicitor schemes in East Anglia, founding member of the Legal Action Group and Legal Aid Practitioners Group . He is a member of the LAPG National Committee and lifelong supporter of Liberty. Having chaired Legal Aid Appeal Committees in Eastern Region for many years, he was recently appointed an Independent Legal Aid Adjudicator by the Legal Services Commission.

Chris also has an interest in Landlord/Tenant law, and the world of 'Buy to Let'. He has overall responsibility for the Housing Team and deals personally with preparation of tenancy agreements and possession proceedings for landlords.

He has held a number of public posts including Colchester Borough Councillor, Chairman of Colchester Quaker Housing Association and Chairman of Governors of Colchester County High School. He has served on governing bodies or legal advisor of many local charities and recently as President of Suffolk and North Essex Law Society.

Jane Wilson , Partnership Member

Jane is joint head of the Family Team. She was educated at Colchester High School for Girls and went on to graduate from Essex University. She was admitted in 1987, and became a Partner in her then practice the following year. Since then, she has specialised in all aspects of family law.

Jane became a Partner at Fisher Jones Greenwood LLP in 2000, where she now deals primarily with high value, complex financial cases and private children issues arising from relationship breakdowns. She has developed a particular expertise in cases involving business as well as privately owned assets. She trained in London as a collaborative lawyer and is currently a member of the East Anglia Collaborative Law Group Steering Committee.

She is a long-standing member of Resolution (formerly the Solicitors Family Law Association) and a former treasurer of the Colchester Conciliation Service

Kate Taylor , Partnership Member

Kate joined the firm in 1998 and became a Partner within the Family team one year later. She qualified in 1984 and has been practicing locally since that time. She initially specialised in Property Law until 1989 when she moved across to practising Family Law, where she has extensive experience in conducting complex financial cases and cases involving children.

Kate is the Partner in charge of Family mediation at the firm. She qualified as a family Mediator in 1991 and Commercial and Civil Mediation in 2002 and has since practised this work in conjunction with her work as a Solicitor.

She specialises in all levels of the financial aspects of divorce and is also particularly interested in the law relating to children and family breakdown. She has the following accreditations and qualifications: Resolution accredited member with specialisms in financial provision and the law relating to children; trained in the area of Collaborative Law in 2005; a member of the Law Society Mediation Panel; a member of the Panel of Mediators for the Court of Appeal Mediation Scheme; a member of the Family Mediators Association; an ADR UK trained Civil and Commercial Mediator.

Kate’s Trustee work includes being a Board member with the Family Mediators Association. She has also been a Trustee of the St. Matthews Child Contact Centre in Colchester for 10 years and was a founder member.

Nigel Humphreys , Partnership Member

Nigel was admitted as a solicitor in 1979 and has over 25 years’ experience in all areas of general litigation and advocacy, but now specialises in family and children work. He was appointed a member of the Law Society Children Panel in 1993, a Solicitors’ Family Law Association Accredited specialist in January 2000, and obtained Higher Court Advocacy rights in Civil Proceedings in January 2004. Nigel is also trained in collaborative law.

As a full time criminal prosecutor in Birmingham for 5 years he appeared daily as an advocate and has conducted many criminal trials in the magistrates’ Courts, both for the prosecution and the defence. More recently as an advocate in care proceedings he has conducted numerous contested hearings before District and Circuit judges lasting up to 5 days. He has extensive experience of financial and ancillary relief cases, including representing clients at final contested hearings. Nigel has special expertise in cohabitation property disputes, involving difficult issues of Trust and Property law.

Nigel is a regular contributor to the Legal Action Group Journal on Children and Family Law Issues, and regularly writes articles on legal issues. As a partnership member in the Family Team he is responsible for their in-house legal training programme, and has recently given an external training course in Pensions on Divorce for the Law Society. Nigel has also served for many years as a school governor.

Simon Osborn , Partnership Member

Simon is a solicitor with over 20 years experience in divorce and family Law. His expertise lies in high value and complex financial cases, often involving family businesses, multiple properties and pensions. He is experienced in contested cases concerning residence and contact to children. He is also experienced in disputes relating to the property and children of unmarried couples.

Simon is a member of the Law Society Family Panel at Advanced Level. He is an Accredited Resolution Specialist in Financial Provision and Children. Simon is a trained Collaborative Family Lawyer and has successfully concluded cases using this alternative to court based litigation. Simon is based at our Charter Court office which is conveniently located on the Colchester Business Park on the north side of Colchester close to the A12.

Lisa Munro , Legal Executive

Lisa is an experienced family lawyer. She has worked in the legal field for 18 years and has been part of the Fisher Jones Greenwood team for the last 8 and a half. Lisa is a qualified Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives and is currently embarking on taking further exams to become a qualified Solicitor.

Lisa’s area of specialism is family law which includes divorce, ancillary relief, private law children act proceedings, injunctions, co-habitee disputes and child protection issues. She has a very keen interest in emergency applications, such as injunctions and interim cases concerning children and to this end she is involved with the Women’s Refuge in Colchester together with Essex Police as part of the Domestic Violence Forum. Lisa was recently involved in a recent Court of Appeal case [Wood v Collins 2006] that was reported in The Times and the Law Reports, which involved successfully appealing a Judge’s sentence on an injunction.

Lisa works with Counsel and is an in-Court advocate. She enjoys the challenge of advocacy work and is intending to expand her skills in this area.

As part of the Family Law team, Lisa is based in our Norfolk House offices, which is ideally situated due to its close proximity to the Court.

Jane Snook , Legal Executive

Jane is a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives who specialises in private law children applications (e.g. contact, residence, parental responsibility). divorce and ancillary financial matters and co-habitee property disputes. She is a SFLA accredited family specialist.

Rachel Earnshaw , Solicitor

Rachel Earnshaw is a qualified solicitor with five years experience in Family Law. Her expertise lies in all areas of family law, but she is particularly interested in child care proceedings and has been appointed to the Law Society's Children Panel, as well as the Law regarding Civil Partnerships which relates to same sex couples. As part of the Family Law team Rachel advises and assists clients in connection with divorce, dissolution, ancillary relief, cohabitee disputes, arrangements concerning children, and also assists parents in child care cases involving the Social Services Department as a Children Panel member she is also able to represent the children in these proceedings. She also enjoys working close to the local community as part of our Tendring Outreach project. Rachel has also retained links with Staffordshire University, where she studied, by acting as a Practitioner Mentor for students and those joining the profession. Rachel is based in our Norfolk House offices, which are closely situated to the Court.

Natasha Cooper , Solicitor

Natasha is a qualified Solicitor working as part of our Family team. Natasha undertakes all aspects of family work however her expertise lies in matters relating to children, care work, and child protection. She has a particular interest in providing legal advice to vulnerable groups in the local community and this is developed by supplying legal advice through our Tendring Outreach project. Natasha began her enthusiasm in Family work whilst she was completing her training contract. She also has a keen interest in the areas of litigation and advocacy.

Charlotte Knappett , Solicitor

Charlotte is a qualified solicitor who works in our Family Department. She practices all aspects of family law including divorce, ancillary relief, private children work , injunction and disputes between cohabitants. She is also qualified to give advice on housing law.

Charlotte is part of our Tendring Outreach community project where she gives legal advice to people living in the vicinity of Clacton and Harwich. She particularly gets satisfaction from this work as she believes in the concept that law should be available for all people. Charlotte is a founder member of Future Lawyers of Colchester (F.L.O.C.) which is a support group where newly qualified local lawyers can share their experiences and offer support to one another

Glenn Craig , Solicitor

Glenn is an experienced legal adviser who has recently qualified as a solicitor. Before joining Fisher Jones Greenwood on 1st April 2005 he worked for Edwards Duthie Solicitors; a very busy legal aid practice based in East London. Before this Glenn has worked as a specialist for the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, based at Witham, Essex and has worked as a specialist benefits adviser with the Social Services department at the London Borough of Barnet. After completing his legal studies Glenn worked as a Parliamentary Assistant to a London based MP. Glenn’s experience includes:

Preventing eviction, including representation at Possession proceedings; Help with benefit problems
Representation to secure release from detention under the Mental Health Act; Taking or threatening High Court action to enforce individual rights to welfare payments, housing or care services from Government or Local Government.

Chris Ellis

Chris became interested in housing law while volunteering for Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity, while he studied philosophy at the University of Essex. After graduating with a PhD in philosophy, he went on to work at as an administrator for Shelter. He returned to academia for a time, teaching philosophy at the Universities of Kent and Essex, before returning to work for Shelter at the Essex and Suffolk Housing Aid Centre in Colchester as a Housing Caseworker. He then worked for Shelter’s publishing and editorial section as a legal writer, where he worked on a number of publications aimed at young people with housing problems and professionals who advise them, Shelter’s Advice Online, Shelter Legal, and edited Housing Matters, Shelter’s bimonthly bulletin for Housing advice workers.

Chris is particularly interested in housing issues affecting young people, and works closely with FJG’s Lawyers for Young People. He is developing expertise in other areas of social welfare law, and hopes to study for the CPE in the near future.

Caroline Gray , Paralegal

Caroline is a Paralegal who works in our family law department, based in our out of town offices on the Severalls Business Park. Caroline joined the firm in 2000 and has spent the last six years developing her expertise in the area of family law. She specialises in matrimonial work and deals with all aspects of relationship breakdown.

Caroline is a member of the Institute of Legal Executives and is completing her studies to become a Solicitor.

Caroline is committed to the principle that everyone should have access to legal advice and as a result she provides the majority of our legal aid services within our Severalls Business Park Family Department.

Lucy Gibbs

Lucy has worked in the Family Department based at Norfolk House since February 2005. She completed and gained a distinction in the ITC Certificate in Family Law & Practice in early 2007. She assists family Partner, Chris Graves on a full time basis and also undertakes paralegal duties for other members of the department.

Victoria Philpot

Victoria developed a keen interest in Family Law whilst working as a secretary in the department and she is currently undertaking her Paralegal training after being with the firm for five years. She works alongside Lisa Munro and Charlotte Knappett in our Norfolk House office and assists them in the areas of Private Law Children Act Proceedings, Injunctions, Divorce, Ancillary Relief and Co-habitee Disputes.