Whyte Law: Property, Estates and Divorce from St Ann's Bay

Whyte Law is a Jamaican firm in St Ann's Bay, on the north coast. The principal is Tashena Analee Whyte. The General Legal Council's 2026 directory of practising attorneys lists her as attorney number 5200, admitted on 8 December 2015. You can repeat that check in the live GLC directory. A current entry confirms that an attorney is in good standing for the year. It does not promise a result, and no directory can tell you whether a particular attorney suits a particular matter. Our column on checking a Jamaican attorney before you hire one has the rest.

The firm does three kinds of work: property, estates and divorce. If your matter is outside those three, we say so at the first contact rather than take it on.

Property work means buying, selling, transfers within a family, first registration of land that has never had a title and problems on an existing title. Before we quote we read the title and ask about any mortgage, caveat or unwound estate behind it. The firm does not carry out valuations: where one is needed, the client obtains it. The property page describes the work and what a purchase file holds.

Estate work begins when someone has died with a house, land, shares or money in a Jamaican bank. Which application goes to the court depends on whether there is a valid Will, who is entitled to apply and where the person lived. A grant from another country may be resealed here; one from a country outside that arrangement needs a different Jamaican application. The estates page and what a probate file holds describe the work.

A Jamaican divorce is granted by the Supreme Court. Separation does not end a marriage and neither does Decree Nisi; Decree Absolute does. We take uncontested divorces only: petitions the other spouse does not oppose. Questions about the children, maintenance or the house are separate matters. The divorce page explains the scope and what a divorce file holds.

Many of the firm's clients live in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Instructions are taken by telephone, email and video call. Documents are signed where the client lives, with the witnessing and notarisation the Jamaican court or registry requires, and we send the signing instructions with them. A trip home is not usually needed, though a court can direct otherwise.

Send a short account of the matter and the key document: the title, the Will, the foreign grant or the marriage certificate. At the consultation we review the facts, identify what is missing and explain the route the file takes. The scope and the professional fee then go to you in writing, stating what is included and which court, registry, tax or other third-party charges arise separately. Current consultation information is on the fees page. You decide whether to proceed after reading it.

No attorney can responsibly guarantee what a court, a registry, a bank or the other side will do, or when. We can tell you the route and the known risks.

To our reader: bring the title and your father's death certificate to the first meeting and we will tell you whether this is work we do and how the file would run.