Blake Anderson Hanley is an American musician and attorney best known to many readers as the former husband of actress Emily Wickersham. That celebrity connection explains much of the search interest around his name, but his own career has moved through two very different fields: independent music and law.
Hanley first became publicly associated with the music project Ghost Lion, where he worked as a singer-songwriter, composer and producer. He later completed law school, joined the Florida Bar and built a legal career in Palm Beach County. Current professional records show that he remains eligible to practice law in Florida, giving him a much more substantial public identity than the usual “NCIS star’s ex-husband” label suggests.
| Detail | Information |
| Full name | Blake Anderson Hanley |
| Known for | Music, law and former marriage to Emily Wickersham |
| Music project | Ghost Lion |
| Music roles | Singer-songwriter, composer and producer |
| Law school | Southwestern Law School |
| Graduation | 2016 |
| Florida Bar admission | May 23, 2018 |
| Current Bar status | Member in good standing |
| Recent legal work | Property, probate and related matters |
| Former wife | Emily Wickersham |
| Marriage date | November 23, 2010 |
| Divorce | December 2018 |
| Children with Emily | None publicly documented |
| Birth date | Not firmly established by a strong primary source |
| Net worth | Not publicly verified |
The strongest parts of Hanley’s biography come from his music project, professional legal records and marriage history. His exact age, family background and personal finances are much less securely documented.
Blake has strong ties to South Florida, particularly the Palm Beach and West Palm Beach area.
Ghost Lion’s official biography describes him as having grown up in West Palm Beach, a place that later influenced both the themes and musical character of his work. He has spoken about growing up around communities that were geographically close but socially divided, and that awareness became part of the ideas behind his songwriting.
South Florida also became important again later in his life.
After years connected with Los Angeles, music and law school, he returned to Florida and developed a professional legal career there.
Blake was publicly known as a musician before he became an attorney.
His best-known project is Ghost Lion, an independent band centered on his songwriting, vocals and production work. The project combines elements of indie pop, electronic music, calypso, cumbia, South American folk and other influences.
That combination gives the music a broader sound than a simple indie-rock label suggests.
Ghost Lion’s material often carries themes of belonging, cultural division, relationships and the desire to create a more welcoming community. Those ideas later fit naturally with the public-service side of Blake’s legal career.
Before Ghost Lion, Blake was associated with a project called Kin Cayo.
The music later evolved into Ghost Lion, with Blake continuing as the central songwriter and creative figure.
Changing a project name is common in independent music, especially when the sound or lineup develops in a new direction. In Blake’s case, Ghost Lion became the name most closely tied to his public music identity.
The band eventually released a full-length album called Nuclear Island.
Rather than chasing a straightforward commercial pop sound, the project blended acoustic instruments, electronic textures, global rhythms and indie songwriting.
Nuclear Island is the most substantial album associated with Ghost Lion.
The record reflects Blake’s interest in combining different musical traditions rather than keeping each influence separate. Nylon-string guitar, live drums, electronic elements and international rhythms all appear within the project.
The album title also fits the broader themes of uncertainty and isolation that appear throughout Ghost Lion’s work.
For Blake, the music seems to have been about more than entertainment.
His public comments around the project frequently connect songwriting with questions about community, identity and how people from different backgrounds relate to one another.
One Ghost Lion track that received notable independent music coverage was “Shot the Sun Down.”
The song was promoted in 2016 and helped introduce the project to audiences beyond South Florida.
Music coverage from the period described Ghost Lion’s sound as celebratory, atmospheric and shaped by Blake’s interest in mixing styles that are not always heard together in indie pop.
That artistic period is useful because it shows that Blake had a genuine music career independent of Emily Wickersham’s television fame.
He was not simply a celebrity spouse who occasionally played music.
Music and law may look like completely unrelated careers, but Blake has linked them through a similar interest in social issues.
His songwriting has discussed division, community and people who feel overlooked. Later legal work placed him in roles helping clients dealing with housing, family and property problems.
That overlap became particularly visible after his return to Palm Beach County.
Rather than abandoning one identity completely for another, Blake appears to have carried some of the same concerns from songwriting into professional service.
It is one of the more interesting parts of his biography because the career change does not feel as random as it first appears.
Blake eventually entered Southwestern Law School.
The Florida Bar currently lists Southwestern University School of Law as his law school and records 2016 as his graduation year.
Going from music into law required a major professional shift.
Law school involves years of study followed by the licensing process required to practice. Blake completed that transition and was admitted to the Florida Bar on May 23, 2018.
That date is useful because it places his legal qualification near the end of his marriage to Emily Wickersham.
Blake Anderson Hanley is not merely someone who studied law.
The Florida Bar lists him as a member in good standing and eligible to practice law in the state.
His current record also shows no disciplinary history during the listed ten-year period.
That official registration gives his legal career a much stronger evidentiary base than many details repeated on celebrity biography websites.
Some older profiles still describe him almost entirely as a musician or as a former family-law attorney, but his legal work continued well beyond his initial admission.
Blake became connected with the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County.
One of his better-documented roles involved the Heirs’ Property Project, which works with people facing legal issues involving inherited family property, title problems, probate and generational wealth.
This kind of work can be especially important in families where property has passed down without a conventional estate plan.
Several relatives may end up sharing ownership while legal title remains unclear, sometimes making it difficult to sell, refinance, insure or protect the property.
Blake’s work in this area placed him within a practical form of community legal service.
Heirs’ property usually develops when real estate passes between generations without a clear will or properly completed probate process.
Over time, multiple family members may acquire partial interests in the same property.
That can create complicated ownership questions.
One person may live in the house, another may have moved away decades earlier and several others may have inherited smaller shares through later generations.
Resolving those problems can involve probate, title research, agreements among family members and other legal work.
Blake’s association with an heirs’ property project therefore involved real estate, estate administration and access to legal help rather than entertainment law.
Older reports often describe Blake as a family-law or domestic-violence attorney.
Those descriptions reflect earlier parts of his legal career and should not necessarily be treated as his permanent specialty.
Professional careers change.
By 2025, public legal-aid material was identifying him specifically with heirs’ property work. His Florida Bar record in 2026 lists membership in the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law section.
That progression points much more clearly toward property and estate-related legal work today.
A biography that still calls him only a divorce lawyer would therefore miss the way his career developed.
Blake’s most current Florida Bar profile lists him with The Grantham Law Firm & Standard Title in West Palm Beach.
His listed position is associate.
That is important because some recent articles continue to describe Legal Aid as his current employer without checking whether the professional record has changed.
The Legal Aid work is well documented and remains an important part of his career history.
However, current bar information should take priority when describing where he practices now.
This is one reason professional biographies need occasional updates rather than simply copying older career descriptions.
A Blake Hanley is also publicly listed as a Realtor Associate with Brown Harris Stevens in Palm Beach.
The profile includes high-value Palm Beach property transactions and places him within the same geographic market as his legal work.
The location, name and professional overlap make the connection plausible, although the real-estate profile itself uses Blake Hanley rather than the full middle name.
For that reason, it is better to note the current public listing without building a large separate career narrative from it.
His firmly verified profession remains law, while music is his best-documented creative career.
Blake’s personal life attracted much wider attention because of Emily Wickersham.
Emily is an actress best known for playing Special Agent Eleanor “Ellie” Bishop on NCIS. She joined the series in 2013 and remained a regular cast member until 2021.
Blake and Emily were already married before she became an NCIS star.
That timeline matters because their relationship was not created by her later television fame.
They married in 2010, several years before the role that made Emily familiar to millions of viewers.
Blake Anderson Hanley and Emily Wickersham married on November 23, 2010.
The ceremony took place on Little Palm Island in the Florida Keys.
Later accounts also describe a larger celebration in Palm Beach a few days afterward, bringing the wedding back to Blake’s South Florida roots.
The couple maintained a relatively quiet marriage despite Emily’s increasing visibility as an actress.
There was no long-running reality show, shared celebrity brand or constant stream of interviews about their relationship.
That privacy continued even when the marriage eventually ended.
Blake and Emily remained married until December 2018.
That means the relationship lasted roughly eight years.
The divorce received attention because Emily was then a major NCIS cast member, but neither of them turned the separation into an extended public dispute.
Reliable reporting does not establish one dramatic cause for the breakup.
That is worth emphasizing because later celebrity biographies sometimes fill the gap with speculation.
When two private people choose not to explain a divorce publicly, a biography should not invent the missing reason.
There is no dependable public record showing that Blake and Emily had children during their marriage.
Emily later became a mother after beginning a relationship with actor James Badge Dale.
She and James welcomed their first son in 2021, married in 2024 and later had a second child.
Those children are part of Emily’s later relationship and should not be confused with her marriage to Blake.
The distinction matters because newer celebrity family pages sometimes mix timelines when multiple relationships are involved.
Emily remained associated with NCIS for several more years after her marriage ended.
She left the series in 2021 after playing Ellie Bishop for eight seasons.
Her career therefore continued on a much more public track than Blake’s.
Blake returned increasingly toward Florida-based legal and community work, while Emily remained connected with television and acting.
That difference probably contributes to the way many readers still encounter his name.
Someone searching Emily’s marriage history finds Blake, then discovers that his own life went in an unexpectedly different direction.
The name Blake Anderson creates another source of confusion.
Blake Anderson Hanley is not Blake Anderson, the actor and comedian known for Workaholics.
The Workaholics actor is Blake Raymond Anderson and built his career in comedy, acting, writing and television production.
Blake Anderson Hanley is associated with Ghost Lion, Florida law and his former marriage to Emily Wickersham.
They are completely different people.
Including the middle and last names is the easiest way to avoid mixing their careers or personal histories.
A number of biography websites give March 2, 1984 as Blake’s birthday.
That date is repeated often enough that it can look firmly established.
The problem is that stronger sources such as the Florida Bar, Ghost Lion’s professional biography and established reporting around his marriage do not publicly rely on that birth date.
This makes exact age claims weaker than the details of his professional career.
There is no need to pretend an uncertain birthday is settled simply because many later websites repeat the same number.
His adult career timeline can be documented without assigning a precise age.
Several recent biographies provide detailed names and careers for Blake’s parents.
Some say his father was an Australian athlete, while others describe his mother as a teacher. These claims tend to be repeated from one biography site to another with little supporting evidence.
Blake’s public professional biographies focus much more strongly on growing up in Palm Beach than on his parents’ identities.
Unless a family connection is confirmed through a stronger source, those details are best left out.
A celebrity-adjacent biography does not become more useful simply because every row of a family tree has been filled.
Blake appears to have maintained the same preference for privacy after his divorce.
Some newer reports say that he remarried and has a daughter. There are professional and community references that appear consistent with a current family life in Palm Beach, but he has not made those relationships central to his public professional identity.
That means there is little reason to publish names and details pulled from weak biography sources.
What matters publicly is that Blake has moved on from his 2018 divorce and continues to work professionally in South Florida.
His current spouse and child, if discussed at all, deserve more privacy than his celebrity marriage received.
Ghost Lion remains active as an identifiable music project online, and its official site continues to host the album and band material.
What is less clear is how frequently Blake performs or records today.
His legal career has become much easier to document in recent years than new Ghost Lion touring or release activity.
That does not mean he stopped making music.
Musicians can continue writing and recording without running a major promotional campaign.
The safest description in 2026 is that Ghost Lion remains an important part of his creative identity while law has become the more visible part of his recent professional life.
Calling Blake only a musician leaves out his legal career.
Calling him only a lawyer ignores years of songwriting, recording and performance.
Calling him Emily Wickersham’s ex-husband reduces both careers to a relationship that ended in 2018.
The most accurate description combines all three parts without letting one overwhelm the others.
He is a musician who later became a licensed attorney, performed public-interest legal work and continues to be searched partly because of a past celebrity marriage.
That combination is unusual enough without adding exaggerated claims.
Blake’s personal net worth is not reliably documented.
Some websites assign figures in the millions, but there is no public financial disclosure that would support a precise total.
Being an attorney, musician or real-estate professional does not provide enough information to calculate wealth.
Income is only one part of net worth.
Property ownership, investments, business interests, taxes, loans and other debts would also need to be known.
Without those details, exact figures are speculation.
Blake’s former wife had a long-running role on a successful network television series.
That does not establish Blake’s wealth.
The couple divorced in 2018, and the financial terms of the separation are not widely documented in a way that allows outsiders to calculate what either person retained.
It would therefore be inaccurate to take an estimated figure for Emily and use it to estimate Blake.
The same rule applies to his legal and music careers.
Successful work provides income, but it does not automatically translate into a specific personal fortune.
The NCIS connection remains the biggest source of mainstream curiosity.
Emily Wickersham developed a large fan base through Ellie Bishop, and viewers naturally search her family history, husband and former relationships.
Blake’s name then leads to something less typical than the usual celebrity-ex profile.
Instead of remaining attached to Hollywood, he built a professional legal career and returned to the Palm Beach community that had influenced his music.
That independent career is what makes his biography worth separating from Emily’s.
Blake Anderson Hanley is an American musician and Florida attorney. He is also known as the former husband of NCIS actress Emily Wickersham.
He is the singer-songwriter, composer and producer behind Ghost Lion.
Ghost Lion combines indie pop with electronic music, calypso, cumbia, South American folk and other influences.
Yes. The Florida Bar lists him as a member in good standing who is eligible to practice law in Florida.
He graduated from Southwestern Law School in 2016 and was admitted to the Florida Bar on May 23, 2018.
His recent career has included heirs’ property, probate and real-property work. Earlier reporting also connected him with family law and domestic-violence matters.
His current Florida Bar profile lists him as an associate at The Grantham Law Firm & Standard Title in West Palm Beach.
Yes. They married on November 23, 2010.
Their wedding took place on Little Palm Island in the Florida Keys.
Their divorce was completed in December 2018.
There are no publicly documented children from their marriage.
A March 2, 1984 birth date is widely repeated online, but stronger professional sources do not clearly confirm it. His exact age is therefore better treated cautiously.
Ghost Lion remains his established music project, although his legal career is more visible in recent public records than new touring or recording activity.
His exact net worth is not publicly verified. Figures published by celebrity biography websites are estimates.
Blake Anderson Hanley first attracted wider attention through music and his marriage to Emily Wickersham, but neither connection tells the whole story. Ghost Lion established him as a real songwriter and producer, while law later gave him a second professional identity rooted in Palm Beach County.
His move into public-interest and property-related legal work is especially useful for understanding where his career went after the celebrity marriage ended. He did not simply disappear after the 2018 divorce. He became a licensed Florida attorney, worked on community property issues and remains in active legal practice according to current professional records.
That makes Blake’s story less about being an actress’s former husband and more about an unusual career shift. Music gave him a public creative voice, while law gave him a different way to work with people and communities. Both are better documented than the speculative age, family and net-worth claims that tend to dominate thinner online profiles.
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