How Long Does a Divorce Take in New York

Thanks for visiting Spodek Law Group – managed by Todd Spodek, a second-generation law firm with over 40 years of combined experience in matrimonial law. New York has no mandatory waiting period. That sounds fast, right? File the papers, agree on terms, get your judgment. Some websites promise “six weeks for uncontested divorces!” The reality? Average case takes 9.5 months. Uncontested cases where both spouses cooperate fully and have simple finances run 3-6 months. Contested cases involving custody disputes, complex asset division, or an uncooperative spouse drag on 12-18 months minimum, often years.

Why the gap between promise and reality? Court backlogs. NYC courts handle thousands of cases simultaneously – getting a court date takes months regardless of how cooperative your spouse is. Then there’s strategic delay. Your spouse doesn’t want this? They’ll delay responses, request adjournments, dispute every proposed term to drag the process out hoping you’ll give up or accept worse terms just to end it.

Uncontested Doesn’t Mean Fast

Uncontested: both spouses agree on everything. Custody, support, asset division, debt allocation. You file a petition, your spouse signs off, the court reviews and issues a judgment. Simple, right? Should take six weeks according to optimistic timelines. But getting on the court calendar in NYC takes 2-4 months even for uncontested cases. Judges review paperwork for completeness – any errors mean rejections and refiling, adding weeks. If you have minor children, the court scrutinizes custody and support arrangements more carefully, extending review times. Then there’s the coordination problem. You and your spouse need to complete financial disclosures, draft a settlement agreement, file all required forms correctly. Even cooperative spouses take weeks to gather documentation, review proposed terms, sign documents. Your attorney sends a draft settlement – your spouse’s attorney takes two weeks to review, proposes changes, your attorney takes another week to respond. Rounds of negotiation consume months even when both sides want things finalized quickly.

Rural counties process cases faster than NYC because they have fewer cases competing for limited court time. Kings County, Queens County, New York County – expect longer waits than Westchester or upstate counties.

Contested Cases Become Wars of Attrition

You disagree about custody, support, asset division, or your spouse simply refuses to cooperate. Now you’re looking at 12-18 months minimum, often much longer. Because contested cases require court intervention at every stage. Temporary orders hearing for interim support and custody – that’s 2-3 months just to get that hearing scheduled in NYC. Discovery phase where both sides exchange financial documents – spouses delay producing documents, claim they can’t find records, dispute relevance of requests. Discovery alone can consume 6-9 months when parties aren’t cooperating.

Then come motions. Your spouse files for temporary exclusive use of the marital residence. You file for temporary increased parenting time. Each motion requires briefing, opposition, reply, oral argument. Months pass between filing and decision. Trial dates often get scheduled 12+ months after filing, and trials themselves can span weeks across multiple court dates separated by months due to calendar congestion.

Strategic delay becomes a weapon. The spouse with more financial resources uses delay to pressure the economically weaker spouse into accepting unfavorable terms. Can’t afford to keep paying your attorney through 18 months of litigation? Your spouse’s lawyer knows that and extends discovery, files unnecessary motions, requests adjournments.

Court Backlogs Trump Legal Rights

New York’s lack of mandatory waiting period means you can theoretically finalize quickly once both parties agree. But court capacity determines actual timelines, and NYC courts are overwhelmed. Matrimonial judges handle hundreds of cases simultaneously. Getting 20 minutes of judicial attention requires waiting months for a conference date, months more for a motion return date, months beyond that for trial dates. This creates perverse incentives. Why should your spouse cooperate if delay costs them nothing but benefits their negotiating position? If they want to stay in the marital home longer, delay. If they want to avoid paying support, delay. If they’re hiding assets and need time to move them, delay.

Judges can’t force cases to move faster when their calendars are booked months out. They can penalize egregious delay tactics (fee-shifting, adverse inferences, sanctions), but those remedies come after you’ve already wasted months dealing with obstruction. Your remedy for delay is more delay – you file a motion to compel compliance, wait months for a hearing, get an order, then enforce the order which requires more months.

Default Doesn’t Accelerate Much

Your spouse won’t respond to the petition? After 40 days from service, you can seek a default judgment. Sounds like it speeds things up – they’re not participating, so the court should just grant your proposed terms and end it. Reality: default cases still require proving your grounds, demonstrating proper service, submitting complete financial disclosures, and getting a court date for an uncontested hearing. Default eliminates your spouse’s ability to contest, but it doesn’t eliminate the procedural steps or the wait for court time. Plus, defaulted spouses can move to vacate the default if they claim they never received proper service or had excusable delay in responding.

What Actually Controls Timeline

Forget the statutory framework. Court capacity in NYC is backlogged – rural courts move faster. You can’t change which county has jurisdiction, but you should calibrate expectations based on local court speed. If your spouse wants to delay, they can delay. Every procedural option becomes an opportunity for obstruction. If they want it done quickly, it can happen in 3-6 months for simple cases. High-net-worth cases with businesses to value, pensions to calculate, custody evaluations needed – these intrinsically take longer regardless of cooperation because the substantive work is extensive.

You can’t control court capacity. You can’t always control your spouse’s cooperation. You can simplify your case by compromising on contested issues – but that means accepting less favorable terms to buy speed.

Custody Evaluations Add Months

When custody is contested and the court orders a forensic evaluation, add 4-6 months minimum. The evaluator needs to interview both parents, interview children, observe parent-child interactions, review records, conduct psychological testing sometimes, write a comprehensive report. Courts won’t schedule custody trials until evaluations are complete – the judge wants the evaluator’s recommendations before making custody determinations.

Evaluators also have their own caseloads and availability constraints. Getting assigned an evaluator might take 2 months. The evaluator schedules appointments across several months. You’re waiting for their report, which could take another month after their last appointment.

New York eliminated fault-based requirements and mandatory waiting periods to make things more accessible and faster. No proving adultery, no waiting years for legal separation to ripen. Just file based on irretrievable breakdown and move forward. But procedural simplification didn’t solve the fundamental bottleneck – insufficient court capacity relative to case volume. The law says you can move quickly. The court system says wait your turn.

Matrimonial lawyers quote 3-6 months for uncontested, 12-18 months for contested. Those are realistic for moderately complex cases with average cooperation and average court speed. But outliers exist in both directions. Simple agreed cases with no children and minimal assets can finalize in 6-8 weeks if everything aligns. Complex high-conflict custody battles with business valuations can drag 3+ years before final judgment.

At Spodek Law Group, we’ve handled both ends of that spectrum. We know which courts move cases faster, which judges tolerate delay versus sanction it, and how to pressure uncooperative spouses without unnecessarily extending timelines through excessive motion practice. We’re available 24/7. Call us.