Vanessa Leishman, Leishman Legal

Vanessa Leishman has been practising family law as a Barrister and Solicitor since 1994 and has a particular focus on assisting clients to resolve their family law issues in a dignified and cost-effective manner.

Vanessa listens carefully to her clients to ensure that she understands their objectives and can offer practical, strategic and timely solutions to them.

She advises clients in relation to all issues arising from marital or de facto separation including complex property settlements involving trusts, companies, tracing of assets and cross-border issues, binding financial agreements, asset planning, spousal maintenance and child support.

Vanessa is also very experienced in children’s issues including relocation disputes, inter-state and overseas child abduction and child protection matters. Vanessa has had extensive experience representing children in parenting and child protection proceedings and is passionate about children’s rights.

Vanessa is a very experienced advocate in Court having practised for many years as a barrister and solicitor in New Zealand. However, she also understands the importance of resolving family law disputes in non-adversarial ways such as through mediation. She is trained in collaborative law which is a cost-effective, dignified and non-adversarial method of resolving family law disputes where clients who are identified as suitable to use the process agree at the outset not to litigate their matter.

Vanessa acts for the complete spectrum of clients including high net worth individuals, primary producers based in rural areas, clients who need advice in relation to how to deal with property division involving a small property pool, or a single asset such as a house or a business, as well as clients facing extremely challenging and difficult domestic circumstances.

Vanessa has specialised in family law in both Australia and New Zealand and has represented a number of clients who have property in both jurisdictions, or who have child support issues, parenting disputes or who wish to relocate with their children from, or to Australia.