Margaret Styles

Practice Areas

Margaret practices in the following areas:

Public Law: Children

Private Law: Children

Family Finance including TOLATA disputes

Alternative Dispute Resolution

Margaret also accepts direct access instructions.

Career

Margaret was called to the bar in 2000 after a civil service career in Whitehall and in recruitment consultancy for the public sector.

She accepts instructions in all aspects of children law and resolution of property issues on relationship breakdown including TOLATA applications and inheritance claims under the 1975 Act. She also appears in the Court of Protection.

Her background and experience have enabled her to assist in cases where clients are finding it hard to focus on central issues, or where distress or inability to cope with proceedings is causing especial difficulty.

Margaret trained early in her career as a mediator, and later as a collaborative lawyer. She qualified soon after the launch of the IFLA scheme as a family finance arbitrator. She uses the skills she has developed in her ADR practice to enable clients to consider all their options and to weigh up carefully how they want to proceed whether through litigation or out of court processes. She welcomes being brought in early in cases to assist and advise and to enable continuity of representation.

She regularly lectures on both children and financial issues for a wide range of audiences and is happy to contribute to larger events.

Professional Memberships

Margaret is a Deputy District Judge (2020)

Family Law Bar Association

Association of Lawyers for Children