Nick Manners

Nick is Head of the award-winning Family Department at Payne Hicks Beach.

Described as ‘strategically astute and very clever’, Nick is a specialist family lawyer who focuses on all areas of family law, including issues arising from divorce, cohabitation and the financial consequences of a relationship breakdown. Nick is a skilled litigator with experience of cases at all levels and has been involved in a number of high profile and reported cases at both first instance and the Court of Appeal. Nick is one of the very few family lawyers to have worked on a case which was heard in the Supreme Court (successfully, in 2023).

Nick has spent his entire career at PHB working on a vast array of high value, high profile and highly complex matters, and is instructed by a wide variety of individuals from all walks of life, such as businesspeople, entrepreneurs, professional sportsmen and women and politicians.

Aside from his financial practice, he routinely advises on contentious children disputes involving contact, residence and relocation (including international relocation). He also deals with abductions, and matters involving same-sex parents.

Nick frequently advises upon and drafts pre and post-nuptial agreements

Nick works for a variety of high net worth and ultra high net worth clients on both contentious and non-contentious matters, including those with a complex international angle. He also advises clients upon the breakdown of civil partnerships and Inheritance Act claims.

Nick has significant experience working on cases which involve Sharia Law, Islamic marriage and divorce.

Nick is part of the team that launched the PHB Mental Health & Family Breakdown Initiative, the first of its kind, to support and protect clients during vulnerable periods of their lives, providing ground breaking peer-reviewed guides.

Nick is ranked in industry directories, including accolades in both Chambers High Net Worth and UK Guides, The Legal 500 UK, Spear’s, Doyle's and eprivateclient. He is regularly quoted in the media on family law matters.

Joined Payne Hicks Beach in 2008, qualified in 2010, promoted to Senior Associate in June 2017 and to Partner in December 2020. Appointed Head of the Family Department 2024.

Resolution

Industry and national publications.