Denise Moran

Practice Areas

• Divorce

• Financial remedy proceedings (including cases involving trusts, corporate structures and international elements)

• Private children matters

• Child abduction and international relocation

• Surrogacy and modern family issues

• Nuptial and cohabitation agreements

• Property disputes between cohabitees

• Financial disputes between unmarried parents

Career

Denise qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales in 2006.

Before joining Maguire Family Law in 2017, she practised family law at leading commercial law firms Cobbetts LLP and DWF LLP.

She is now a Director of Maguire Family Law and leads the firm’s Wilmslow office.

Personal

Denise Moran is a Director of Maguire Family Law and Head of the firm’s Wilmslow office. She has over 20 years’ experience advising clients on complex family law matters including divorce, financial remedy proceedings and private children law.

Denise regularly acts for high net worth individuals including professionals, entrepreneurs and individuals in business, finance, media and sport. Her work frequently involves complex financial structures including trusts, corporate assets and internationally held wealth.

She is known for combining a commercial and pragmatic approach with sensitivity to the personal challenges clients face during family disputes.

Denise plays a key role in the firm’s complex financial remedy and private children cases, including matters involving high-value assets, trusts and international elements. She is also experienced in sensitive children cases involving modern family issues and complex welfare considerations.

Work Highlights

Denise is recognised for her expertise in complex financial remedy cases and private children matters.

Notable Work

Denise has acted in a number of complex and sensitive family law cases including:

• Advising in arbitration proceedings concerning financial remedy issues, helping to bring a long-running and highly contentious dispute to a conclusion.

• Representing a parent in Children Act proceedings involving highly neurodiverse children and a neurodiverse parent, achieving a positive outcome following a contested final hearing.

• Advising in financial remedy proceedings where a party lacked litigation capacity and the principal asset comprised a substantial clinical negligence award, navigating the case carefully to protect the client’s interests while reducing conflict.

Clients

Denise frequently acts for high-net worth individuals including entrepreneurs and business professionals. She has represented a number of high profile clients in the field of sport and entertainment.

Industry Sector Expertise

Financial Remedy Work

Denise has handled financial remedy cases with assets in excess of £30m. She has also dealt with high income cases (involving earned income in excess of £1m per annum).

Denise frequently deals with cases involving assets held offshore (recent jurisdictions including Hong Kong, Australia, Switzerland and the USA, amongst others) and trust structures.

International Work

Denise frequently undertakes work with an international element including those with property and/or pensions held abroad. She often advises in relation to the issue of competing jurisdictions and has dealt with applications made under Part III of the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984 for financial relief in England and Wales after an overseas divorce.

Children Work

Denise is noted for dealing with the most complex of private law cases in relation to children.

She has handled many cases involving specific welfare needs including where parents with alcohol and/or drug addictions or where a parent has entered into a new relationship with a partner who presented a risk to the child. Denise is often instructed where a level of neurodiversity has been diagnosed (including ASD and ADHD) in the children and/or parents. Denise has been instructed in several specific issue applications regarding the method/venue of schooling for children (including homeschooling and private education).

Denise has been involved in many cases involving parental alienation and has been able to secure positive results in cases that have at times been seen to be intractable.

Surrogacy Work

Denise has advised in domestic surrogacy cases on behalf of the surrogate and intended parents, securing the required orders.

ADR and Resolution

Denise works hard to seek to resolve matters efficiently and frequently advocates the use of PFDRs and Arbitration in appropriate cases.

Experience

Leadership

Denise heads the Wilmslow Team of Maguire Family Law. There are 5 solicitors in Wilmslow. Denise mentors and supervises all solicitors in the Wilmslow team and other junior lawyers within the firm.

Denise is heavily involved in the Female Leaders Network in Manchester.