---
title: "Daniella Cienfuegos ✦ Associate ✦ Goldwater Droit"
meta:
  "og:description": "Consult with Me Daniella Cienfuegos, a trilingual associate at Goldwater Droit, specializing in family law and youth protection. Book your consultation today!"
  "og:title": "Daniella Cienfuegos ✦ Associate ✦ Goldwater Droit"
  description: "Consult with Me Daniella Cienfuegos, a trilingual associate at Goldwater Droit, specializing in family law and youth protection. Book your consultation today!"
---

![Daniella Cienfuegos](https://goldwaterdroit.com/_vercel/image?url=%2F_composites%2Fv1%2Fprofile%2Fdaniella-cienfuegos%2Fportrait@2x.webp&w=1280&q=100)

###### Our Team

# Daniella Cienfuegos

[Email](https://goldwaterdroit.com/mailto:dc@goldwaterdroit.com) [Download vCard](https://goldwaterdroit.com/_content-assets/profiles/daniella-cienfuegos/attachments/daniella-cienfuegos.vcf)

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[Email](https://goldwaterdroit.com/mailto:dc@goldwaterdroit.com) [Download vCard](https://goldwaterdroit.com/_content-assets/profiles/daniella-cienfuegos/attachments/daniella-cienfuegos.vcf)

[**Book Now**](https://book.goldwaterdroit.com/v2/#book/service/34)

- ###### Bar Admission
  - Quebec, 2023
- ###### Education
  - LL.B., UQAM, 2022
  - DEC (with Distinction), Paralegal Technology, O'Sullivan College, 2019
  - ASP, Legal Secretariat, St. Pius X Business Centre, 2015
- ###### Languages Spoken
  - English, French, Spanish
- ###### Honours & Distinctions
  - Recipient of the Aura Award
  - Nominated for the Governor General's Academic Medal
  - Nominated for the Labelle Côté Tabah & Associés Award
- ###### Groups & Associations
  - The Family Law Lawyers Association (AAADFQ)
  - Clinique Juridique de Grand-Montréal (2020–2023)
  - Chair, Paralegal Technology Group, O'Sullivan College
  - Represented the Ministry of Justice Canada at the Barreau's annual Salon Visez Droit event

##### Practice Areas

- [Family Law](https://goldwaterdroit.com/en/services/family-law)
- [Asset & Property Division](https://goldwaterdroit.com/en/services/asset-property-division)
- [Divorce & Separation](https://goldwaterdroit.com/en/services/divorce-separation)
- [Marriage & Cohabitation Agreements](https://goldwaterdroit.com/en/services/marriage-cohabitation-agreements)
- [Parenting, Custody & Access](https://goldwaterdroit.com/en/services/parenting-custody-access)

**Daniella Cienfuegos** is an Associate at our firm who appears before the Superior Court in high-conflict family law matters. She is trilingual in English, French, and Spanish.

Her experience covers the full range of family law matters, such as divorce and separation, custody and access, partition of family patrimony assets, and international and interprovincial child custody. She has handled matters involving multiple children, urgent safeguard proceedings arising in contexts of domestic violence and substance use, and parenting arrangements requiring exchanges outside Quebec. She has experience in high-conflict custody disputes, court-ordered psychosocial expertises, and divorce judgments addressing travel and passport complexities, relocation-notice requirements, and the proportional sharing of special expenses.

Alongside the family practice, Daniella has also represented lessors and lessees before the Tribunal administratif du logement, including consolidated multi-file disputes in which she has secured lease resiliation, recovery of unpaid rent, and restoration damages tied to unauthorized modifications.

Daniella is calm, poised, reassuring; she carries a measure of gravitas unusual at her stage of a career. She is particularly organized and responsive in her files, and her clients routinely report feeling well served.

Daniella joined Goldwater Droit in February 2023 as an articling student, selected through the competitive Course aux Stages process. Before law school, she worked at the Department of Justice Canada in tax litigation, represented the Ministry of Justice Canada at the Barreau's _Salon Visez Droit_, and volunteered on racial profiling files at the _Clinique juridique de Montréal-Nord_, where community involvement, honest self-reflection, and intellectual curiosity deepened her commitment to equal access to justice in family and youth-protection matters. She holds an LL.B. from the Université du Québec à Montréal (2022) and a DEC with Distinction in Paralegal Technology from O'Sullivan College of Montréal, and was called to the Quebec Bar in 2023.

If she had not become a lawyer, she likely would have pursued a career as a private investigator, a field that mirrors many of the same skills she brings to family law: sharp intuition, attention to detail, persistence, and a natural ability to uncover the facts beneath emotionally complex situations.

##### LITIGATION & PRACTICE HIGHLIGHTS

- [_Droit de la famille — 251308 (2025)_](https://canlii.ca/t/kf551) - Acted for the mother on contested provisional measures in an interprovincial family file involving a three-year-old daughter, where the father moved to formalize his de facto majority parenting under a 2023 temporary agreement. Secured a structured parenting-time schedule exceeding the father's proposed offer, a fixed exchange protocol, mandatory financial disclosure, and the Court's express acknowledgement that the mother's circumstances had since changed and improved — with all rights expressly preserved on the merits.
- [_Droit de la famille — 25256 (2025)_](https://canlii.ca/t/kb058) - Represented the father in a safeguard proceeding involving three children under the age of 12, in a highly contested family matter marked by the mother’s unilateral suspension of access for a period of two months, as well as competing allegations of family violence and parental alienation. The matter also involved the mother’s request for the appointment of counsel for the children and the father’s counter-request for a psychosocial assessment. Successfully obtained a phased reintroduction of the father’s access rights, progressing from supervised visits to overnight weekend access, as well as a court ordered psychosocial assessment in lieu of the appointment of separate counsel for the children.
- [_Liu vs. Xie — 45264 (2025)_](https://canlii.ca/t/khplc) - Represented the landlord in a contested residential leasing dispute before the Tribunal administratif du logement involving unpaid rent, unauthorized commercial use of a condominium unit, alleged misrepresentations regarding permitted use, and competing claims for damages and rent reduction. Successfully obtained judgment condemning the tenant to pay over $17,000 in unpaid rent and damages, dismissal of the tenant’s claim for a 33% rent reduction, and findings that the tenant had improperly converted the residential unit into a real estate brokerage office without the landlord’s authorization.