New York Domestic Relations Law: Marriage, Divorce, Property & Support

New York’s Domestic Relations Law is the state statute that controls marriage, divorce, annulment, spousal maintenance, child support, custody, and the division of property between spouses. It applies in every county, and while individual judges have real discretion in how they apply it, the thresholds, formulas, and requirements below are the same statewide. What follows is a practical walk through the parts of the law most people actually encounter.

Who Can Legally Marry in New York

The minimum age is eighteen, with no exceptions. Section 15-a prohibits any marriage where either party is under eighteen, and a clerk who knowingly issues a license to an underage person commits a misdemeanor.¹ That is stricter than many other states, which still allow underage marriage with parental or judicial consent.

Every couple needs a marriage license from a New York town or city clerk before the ceremony. Section 13 requires the license to be delivered to the officiant within sixty days of issuance.² A twenty-four-hour waiting period runs between issuance and the ceremony, though a court can waive it.

The ceremony must be performed by someone authorized under Section 11. The authorized list is broad and includes clergy, Ethical Culture leaders, current and former governors, mayors, state legislators, many federal and state judges, and judges or peacemaker judges of Indian tribal courts.³

Some marriages carry no legal weight from the start. Under Section 5, marriages between an ancestor and descendant, between full or half-blood siblings, or between an uncle or aunt and a niece or nephew are void.⁴

A boundary worth stating directly: New York does not recognize common law marriage formed within the state. No length of cohabitation and no amount of holding yourselves out as married substitutes for a license and a ceremony. The one exception is a common law marriage validly established in another state that recognizes it; New York honors those under the Full Faith and Credit Clause.

Residency You Need Before You Can File

Before you can file for divorce, annulment, or separation, at least one spouse must satisfy a residency rule under Section 230. Miss it and the case gets dismissed. Any one of these five is enough:⁵

You married in New York and either spouse has lived here continuously for at least one year before filing.
You lived in New York as spouses and either spouse has lived here continuously for at least one year.
The grounds for divorce arose in New York and either spouse has lived here continuously for at least one year.
The grounds arose in New York and both spouses live here when the action begins, with no minimum duration.
Either spouse has lived in New York continuously for at least two years before filing, regardless of where the marriage occurred or the grounds arose.

The two-year option is the catch-all for couples who married elsewhere and whose problems developed elsewhere.

Grounds for Divorce

Section 170 lists seven grounds. The one used in most cases is irretrievable breakdown, New York’s no-fault option, which requires one spouse to state under oath that the relationship has been broken for at least six months. The practical catch: a court will not grant the divorce until every economic issue is resolved. That includes property division, maintenance, child support, custody, and attorney fees.⁶

Fault-based grounds remain available:

Cruel and inhuman treatment that endangers the physical or mental well-being of the other spouse and makes continued cohabitation unsafe.
Abandonment for one year or more.
Imprisonment of one spouse for three or more consecutive years after the marriage.
Adultery.
Living apart for at least one year under a separation judgment or a written separation agreement.

Fault filings are less common than they once were, but they still carry strategic weight because certain fault-based conduct can influence maintenance and property division.

Annulment as a Separate Path

An annulment treats the marriage as though it never legally existed. Section 140 sets out the grounds:⁷

Bigamy, where one spouse already had a living husband or wife from a still-valid prior marriage.
One or both parties were under the legal age of consent.
Developmental disability or mental illness that prevented capacity to consent.
Physical incapacity to consummate that is permanent and incurable, with the action brought within five years.
Consent obtained through force, duress, or fraud significant enough that the other spouse would not have married had the truth been known.
Incurable mental illness lasting five or more continuous years.

Fraud is the most litigated of these, and courts set a high bar: the misrepresentation has to go to something essential about the marriage, not a broken promise or a lie about money. Each ground also carries its own rules about who can bring the action and within what timeframe.⁸

Prenuptial and Postnuptial Agreements

New York allows both prenuptial and postnuptial agreements under Section 236-B(3). They can address property division, maintenance, testamentary provisions, and even the right to elect against a spouse’s will.⁹

Formal requirements are not optional. The agreement must be in writing, signed by both parties, and acknowledged in the same manner required to record a deed. A prenuptial agreement can also be acknowledged before a person authorized to perform marriages. The terms must be fair and reasonable when signed and cannot be unconscionable when a court is asked to enforce them.¹⁰ That two-pronged test means an agreement that looked fair twenty years ago can still be set aside if enforcing it now would be fundamentally unjust.

Full financial disclosure is essential. Courts regularly invalidate agreements where one spouse concealed assets, debts, or income. Provisions on child custody or support can be included, but a judge still makes an independent best-interests determination, so those clauses never fully bind the court.

How Marital Property Gets Divided

New York is an equitable distribution state, not a community property state. Under Section 236-B(5), a court divides marital property fairly, which does not necessarily mean equally. Marital property is everything either spouse acquired from the wedding date until the divorce action is filed, regardless of whose name is on the title.¹⁰ Separate property, including assets owned before the marriage, inheritances, and gifts from someone other than the spouse, stays with the original owner.

Sixteen statutory factors guide the division. The ones that most often move the outcome include:

Each spouse’s income and property at the time of marriage and at the time of filing.
The duration of the marriage and each spouse’s age and health.
The custodial parent’s need to stay in the marital home.
Loss of health insurance or pension rights caused by the divorce.
Each spouse’s contributions as wage earner, homemaker, or parent.
Whether either spouse wasted marital assets.
Tax consequences of the proposed distribution.
Whether either spouse committed domestic violence.

One point to flag: New York no longer treats a professional license or degree as divisible marital property. A 2016 change removed enhanced earning capacity from the asset pool. The court can still consider one spouse’s contributions to the other’s career advancement when dividing everything else.⁹ Businesses, professional practices, and complex portfolios typically need expert appraisals, which is often one of the costlier parts of a contested divorce.

Spousal Maintenance

Post-divorce maintenance (what many people call alimony) is calculated with a statutory formula under Section 236-B(6). The formula produces a presumptive amount. A court can deviate, but has to explain why in writing.

The court runs two calculations and uses whichever gives the lower number. The first takes 20% of the higher earner’s income and subtracts 25% of the lower earner’s income. The second takes 40% of combined income and subtracts the lower earner’s full income. The result cannot leave the recipient with more than 40% of combined income. The formulas apply only up to a statutory income cap, set at $228,000 for the period from March 1, 2024, through February 28, 2026. The cap is adjusted every two years. For income above the cap, the court has broader discretion and considers fifteen listed factors.¹¹

Duration follows an advisory schedule tied to the length of the marriage:¹²

Marriages up to 15 years: 15% to 30% of the length of the marriage.
Marriages of 15 to 20 years: 30% to 40%.
Marriages over 20 years: 35% to 50%.

A ten-year marriage, for example, points to maintenance of roughly one and a half to three years. These are guidelines, not hard ceilings, and judges adjust them based on the circumstances.

Child Support

Child support follows the Child Support Standards Act, codified in Section 240(1-b). The court starts with each parent’s gross income, subtracts certain deductions such as taxes and Medicare, and combines the results. A fixed percentage then applies based on the number of children:¹³

One child: 17%
Two children: 25%
Three children: 29%
Four children: 31%
Five or more children: no less than 35%

These percentages apply to combined parental income up to a statutory cap of $183,000 through February 2026. For income above the cap, the court can apply the same percentage, use its discretion based on statutory factors, or combine the two approaches. The total obligation is split between the parents in proportion to their incomes, so the higher earner pays the larger share.

Enforcement and Changes Over Time

A parent who falls four or more months behind on payments can have a driver’s license suspended under the Family Court Act. Professional, occupational, and business licenses can also be placed in jeopardy through the same mechanism. The suspension can be lifted once the parent catches up or makes a satisfactory partial payment.

Orders are not fixed forever. When an order is at least two years old and paid through the Support Collection Unit, the state may apply an automatic cost-of-living adjustment if the Consumer Price Index has risen by at least 10% since the last order. A parent who disagrees can file a written objection within thirty-five days, which pauses the new amount until a court hearing.

Custody and Visitation

Every custody decision in New York turns on the best interests of the child. Section 70 is explicit that neither parent has a presumptive right to custody; the court’s sole focus is what best promotes the child’s welfare and happiness.¹⁴

Legal custody and physical custody are separate questions. Legal custody is the authority to make major decisions about education, healthcare, and religious upbringing. Physical custody determines where the child lives day to day. Either can be sole or joint, and the two don’t always track together. A common arrangement is joint legal custody with one parent having primary physical custody and the other parent on a visitation schedule.

In contested cases the court may appoint an attorney for the child, particularly when the child is old enough to express a meaningful preference. The judge weighs the stability of each home, each parent’s capacity to meet the child’s emotional needs, and the practical demands of schooling and social life.

Relocation

Relocation disputes are among the most contested. When a custodial parent wants to move a significant distance, the court applies the same best-interests standard and weighs the reason for the move, the effect on the child’s relationship with the other parent, and whether a revised visitation schedule can preserve meaningful contact. A parent who relocates without court approval risks losing custody. Getting permission before the move is far safer than asking for forgiveness afterward.

Retirement Accounts and QDROs

Retirement accounts earned during the marriage are marital property subject to equitable distribution, and dividing them requires a specific legal instrument: a Qualified Domestic Relations Order, or QDRO. Without one, a plan administrator will not release funds to the non-employee spouse.¹⁵

A QDRO must be issued or approved by a state court under domestic relations law. It has to identify the participant and the alternate payee by name and address, name each retirement plan, state the dollar amount or percentage to be paid, and specify the time period it covers. The plan administrator reviews it against federal ERISA requirements, and a poorly drafted QDRO can be rejected, which delays distribution and sometimes costs more in legal fees to fix.

For a defined-benefit pension, the division method matters. A separate-interest approach gives the non-employee spouse an independent benefit they can access on their own timeline. A shared-interest approach ties the non-employee spouse’s payments to the employee spouse’s retirement date, meaning you may receive nothing until your ex decides to retire. Getting the QDRO right during the divorce avoids problems that can take years to untangle.

Federal Tax Treatment of Payments and Transfers

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act changed how divorce-related payments are taxed. For any divorce or separation agreement executed after December 31, 2018, maintenance is not deductible by the paying spouse and is not taxable income for the recipient.¹⁶ If your agreement was finalized before 2019 and has not been modified to adopt the new rules, the old treatment still applies, with the payor deducting and the recipient reporting the income.

Child support has never been deductible or taxable. The paying parent does not deduct it, and the receiving parent does not report it as income.¹⁷

Property transfers between spouses, or between former spouses when incident to the divorce, trigger no taxable gain or loss under 26 U.S.C. § 1041. The transfer is treated as a gift, and the receiving spouse takes the same tax basis the transferring spouse had.¹⁸ The transfer has to happen within one year after the marriage ends or be related to the divorce. The practical consequence is that the receiving spouse inherits any built-in gain. A stock portfolio with a low cost basis means capital gains tax whenever you sell, even though nothing is owed at the time of transfer. That is why the tax profile of each asset belongs in equitable distribution negotiations from the start.

1
New York State Senate. New York Domestic Relations Law DOM 15-a
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New York State Senate. New York Domestic Relations Law DOM 13
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New York State Senate. New York Domestic Relations Law Section 11
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New York State Senate. New York Domestic Relations Law DOM 5 – Incestuous and Void Marriages
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New York State Senate. New York Domestic Relations Law 230 – Required Residence of Parties
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New York State Senate. New York Domestic Relations Law Section 170
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New York State Senate. New York Domestic Relations Law DOM 140
8
New York State Senate. New York Domestic Relations Law Article 9 – Action to Annul a Marriage or Declare It Void
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New York State Senate. New York Domestic Relations Law Section 236
10
New York State Senate. New York Domestic Relations Law 236 – Special Controlling Provisions
11
New York State Unified Court System. 15 Factors for Post-Divorce Maintenance Pursuant to DRL 236-B(6)(e)(1)
12
New York State Unified Court System. Advisory Schedule for Duration of Award of Post-Divorce Maintenance
13
New York State Senate. New York Domestic Relations Law 240 – Custody and Child Support
14
New York State Senate. New York Domestic Relations Law DOM 70 – Habeas Corpus for Child Detained by Parent
15
U.S. Department of Labor. QDROs Chapter 1 – Qualified Domestic Relations Orders: An Overview
16
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 452, Alimony and Separate Maintenance
17
Internal Revenue Service. Tax Information for Non-Custodial Parents
18
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1041 – Transfers of Property Between Spouses or Incident to Divorce