Family law firms handling divorce, custody and parenting time, child support and spousal maintenance, prenuptial agreements and orders of protection. Every firm is checked for active licensure, a clean disciplinary record and a registered entity, and ranked on what it publishes about the cost and the process rather than on outcomes that belong to somebody's children. So far that means 2 cities.
A firm is worth comparing against the firms somebody could hire instead of it, so every ranking is a city and a practice. Pick the city.
Jeffrey B. Peltz works from Broadway and practises divorce alongside bankruptcy, immigration and real estate, which its own title says. It explains twelve stages of a matrimonial case, the most of any firm in this ranking, from the summons and the net worth statement to the attorney for the child and the judgment.
Angiuli & Gentile works from Hylan Boulevard in Staten Island and names five attorneys with a rank beside each, two of them the firm's founders. It explains ten stages of a matrimonial case, from the summons to the judgment.
Elliot Green works from Court Street in Brooklyn, names himself and practises custody, divorce and domestic violence work, which his own title says.
Brian D. Perskin & Associates works from Court Street in Brooklyn with a second office on East 42nd Street, and names eight people with a rank beside most of them. It explains eleven stages of a matrimonial case and publishes a page about fees.
David Centeno Law works from Broadway and publishes a flat fee for an uncontested divorce, which two firms in this ranking do. It names no attorney on the pages we could read, so what is missing is its own roster rather than its prices.
Every other practice in this directory can be compared on outcomes. This one cannot, and not because the data is missing. A custody file is about somebody's children, a divorce judgment divides two people's property, and the one number everybody wants to know is set by a formula that no lawyer can argue down. What is left to compare is narrower, harder to find and far more useful: what the firm charges, what it will tell you before you hire it, and which of the several ways through this it actually does.
Two hundred and fifty firms in this directory make some version of that promise. A matrimonial firm in New York cannot. Rule 1.5(d)(5)(i) of the Rules of Professional Conduct forbids any fee in a domestic relations matter where "the payment or amount of the fee is contingent upon the securing of a divorce or of obtaining child custody or visitation or is in any way determined by reference to the amount of maintenance, support, equitable distribution, or property settlement". A firm advertising a contingency here would be advertising something the rule prohibits.
What you pay instead is an hourly rate drawn against a retainer paid in advance. That makes the rate and the retainer the only prices there are, which is why this ranking counts whether a firm publishes them.
Part 1400 of the court rules applies to every attorney taking a divorce, separation, custody, support or maintenance matter. Section 1400.3 requires a written agreement, signed by both of you before the work starts, and it has to set out the amount of the advance retainer and what it covers, the hourly rate of each person whose time may be charged to you, how the fee is determined if you discharge the firm, and the frequency of itemized billing, "which shall be at least every 60 days". Section 1400.2 adds the statement of client's rights: you are entitled to understand the rates and the retainer before you sign, an attorney "may not request a retainer fee that is non-refundable", the unused balance comes back to you, and a fee dispute between one and fifty thousand dollars can go to arbitration under Part 137.
So the law already makes sure you learn the price. It makes sure of it in the room where you are signing, after you have chosen. Nothing requires a firm to publish any of it beforehand, which is the moment you are comparing three firms and deciding which one to call. That gap is what pillar B measures in this practice: not results, but whether the firm will tell you the rate, the retainer or a flat fee for an uncontested case while you are still a stranger reading its website.
Section 413 of the Family Court Act sets the basic obligation as a share of combined parental income: seventeen percent for one child, twenty-five for two, twenty-nine for three, thirty-one for four and no less than thirty-five percent for five or more. The percentage applies up to a cap the state adjusts every two years, published at $193,000 in the March 2026 chart, and a court may apply it to income above that or not. A firm cannot win you a better percentage; the fight, where there is one, is about what counts as income and what happens above the cap.
Maintenance works the same way, on its own statutory formula with its own cap. Between them, they take the two largest numbers in most divorces out of the category of things a lawyer can promise you, which is worth knowing before you read anybody's marketing.
Since section 170(7) of the Domestic Relations Law took effect, one spouse stating under oath that "the relationship between husband and wife has broken down irretrievably for a period of at least six months" is a ground for divorce on its own. No cruelty to prove, no abandonment, no consent required from the other side.
The same subdivision carries the condition that matters to how long your case takes: no judgment is granted until the economics and the arrangements for the children are settled, by agreement or by the court. The divorce is not what takes a year. Property, support and custody are.
In every other practice here, pillar B reads the firm's own results page and counts what it publishes. In this one there is nothing we would want a firm to publish. Custody proceedings concern children, matrimonial files are routinely sealed, and a firm advertising the custody arrangement it obtained is advertising a real family's private arrangement as a sales aid.
So the pillar asks different questions in this practice, and a firm that publishes no results is not marked down for it. What it is marked on is the cost, the process and the paths: whether it explains what actually happens between filing and judgment, and whether it says which of mediation, collaborative divorce and litigation it does.
The retainer agreement is going to answer all of this in writing, because the rule requires it. Asking first tells you what the answers are while you can still walk to the next firm on the list.
We list firms whether they ask us to or not, and everything on a profile is read from the outside: the firm's own site, its Google listings, its state's attorney register. That means we get things wrong, and the person who can see it is the firm. Claiming your profile is free, and so is every correction. The annual listing adds a dofollow link to your site, your own logo on your profile and the client reviews you want quoted. Neither moves a single point of the score.