Uncontested Divorce in New York: What It Means and Who Actually Qualifies

By the FormsPal Editorial Team · Updated September 2, 2026 · 12 min read

People say "uncontested divorce" the way they say "amicable divorce," as a general mood rather than a legal category. New York's Supreme Court uses it, and its own paperwork calls it "undefended," to mean something narrower and more specific: your spouse either agrees to every term the judgment has to contain or does not fight the case after being properly notified, and by the time the papers reach a judge, every dollar and every parenting question is already settled in writing. That distinction decides whether your case moves through the county's uncontested calendar in a matter of weeks once your paperwork is ready, or sits on a contested matrimonial docket with motions and a trial date months or years out. This guide covers what New York's version of uncontested actually requires, an honest checklist for whether your situation fits it, and what changes the moment it stops fitting.

None of this is marketing language. It comes from the same forms and statutes the County Clerk's office and the Supreme Court's matrimonial part use every day. A case either clears New York's bar for undefended or it doesn't, and knowing which one applies to you before you buy an index number can save months of redoing paperwork on the wrong track.

What "uncontested" actually means in New York

An uncontested, or undefended, divorce in New York is one where the case reaches a judge with nothing left to argue about. New York's no-fault ground, DRL 170(7), makes that a legal precondition rather than a preference: a judge cannot sign the judgment until the marital property has been divided, spousal maintenance has been addressed, and, when the couple has children together, custody, parenting time, and child support are all resolved. In an agreed case that resolution comes from a written settlement agreement the two of you sign. New York does not accept a partial settlement. Every one of those questions has to have an answer on paper before the case can finish.

Where New York differs from a state that only recognizes full agreement is in how your spouse gets to that "undefended" posture. One route is the one most people picture: your spouse reviews the settlement and signs the Affirmation of Defendant, formally consenting to the case going straight to the uncontested calendar. The other route is a default. If your spouse is properly served with the summons and simply does not answer within the response window, twenty days if served inside New York, thirty if served outside it, the case can still move forward as undefended. The court's own Affirmation of Regularity exists specifically to tell the judge whether your spouse appeared or defaulted. Either way, the economic and parenting terms still have to be resolved in writing before judgment, which in practice means your own settlement position has to be complete even if your spouse never signs on to it directly.

It's also worth separating "uncontested" from "unopposed by choice." Only one spouse, called the plaintiff, has to swear that the relationship has broken down irretrievably. That's how New York's no-fault ground works whether or not the other spouse, the defendant, cooperates. What earns a case the "uncontested" label is that nothing about it is actually being fought, not that the paperwork was filed by only one of you.

Who genuinely qualifies

Check your situation against these four points. All four have to hold. New York doesn't give partial credit for three out of four, the case is either undefended or it isn't.

• You clear one of the five residency paths. Either spouse must have lived in New York continuously for two years right before the case starts, or for one year if you married in New York, lived in New York together as a married couple, or the grounds for the divorce arose in New York. If both of you already live in New York and the grounds arose here, no minimum duration applies at all.
• You agree on every economic and parenting term. How you're dividing property, whether either of you is paying spousal maintenance, and, with children under 18, custody, parenting time, and child support under New York's guideline formula. One open item keeps the judgment from being signed until it's resolved.
• The relationship has already broken down for at least six months. DRL 170(7) is a statement about the past, not a period you wait out after filing. By the time one of you swears to it, the six months has to have already passed.
• Your spouse takes part or stays out of the way. That means signing the Affirmation of Defendant to consent, or being properly served and not answering within the response window. A spouse who can't be located changes the posture of the case and usually needs its own procedure for service.

Residency paths: Domestic Relations Law §230, via the New York State Senate's statute text. The no-fault ground and its settlement precondition: DRL §170(7), via the same source. Response windows confirmed against our funnel's own eligibility gate data (New York carries no living-apart separation gate, unlike states that require one).

How the process differs from a contested case

Both routes start the same way, an index number bought from the County Clerk and a case opened in the Supreme Court of the county where either spouse or a minor child lives. What happens after that diverges almost completely. A contested case exists because a judge has to decide at least one issue the spouses can't agree on, and New York's matrimonial rules are built to test that carefully, formal discovery, motion practice, sometimes a trial. An undefended case skips that machinery because there's nothing left for the court to decide.

There's no post-filing clock in New York the way some states run one. What an undefended case removes is everything that would otherwise fill the months after filing: discovery demands, motion practice, and a trial date competing for room on the court's calendar. For the mechanics of how long that actually takes in practice, see how long a New York divorce takes.

Irretrievable breakdown, the no-fault ground

New York grants a divorce on the ground the statute calls irretrievable breakdown, one spouse swearing under oath that the relationship has broken down beyond repair for at least six months. It's a no-fault standard. Nobody has to prove infidelity, cruelty, or abandonment, and the court doesn't weigh who caused the marriage to end when it signs an undefended judgment. One spouse's sworn statement is enough to satisfy the ground itself.

What DRL 170(7) adds, and what separates New York from most other no-fault states, is a hard precondition attached to that same subdivision: no judgment can be granted on this ground until the economic issues, equitable distribution of the marital property, spousal maintenance, child support, and legal fees, along with custody and parenting time for any children, have been resolved by the spouses themselves or decided by the court. In an agreed case, that resolution is your written settlement agreement. It isn't optional paperwork attached to the divorce, it's the thing that makes the no-fault judgment legally possible to sign.

New York still keeps fault-based grounds on the books, cruelty and abandonment among them, and a spouse can plead one instead of, or alongside, irretrievable breakdown. Doing so almost always signals a contested case, since alleging fault gives the other spouse something to dispute. An undefended filing has no reason to reach for a fault ground when irretrievable breakdown accomplishes the same legal result without asking either spouse to prove anything about the other.

The Uncontested Joint Divorce option

New York offers something most states don't: a statewide program that lets both spouses file the divorce together, as co-plaintiffs, instead of one filing against the other. It only works on the irretrievable-breakdown ground, and only if neither of you has already started the case with a summons. Once you're both on the joint packet, there's no defendant to serve and no response window to wait out, because there's no one left to notify. You file, together, and the case moves straight onto the calendar for review.

Separate joint-program form sets exist for couples with children and couples without, and, like the standard route, the joint packet still needs a signed settlement agreement covering property, maintenance, and any parenting terms before a judge will sign the judgment. What the joint option removes is the part of the process most people dread, having a spouse formally served with divorce papers. If you and your spouse are already sitting down together to work out the terms, filing together is often the more direct path onto New York's uncontested calendar.

Joint program: confirmed statewide via the New York Courts' Uncontested Joint Divorce page.

When an uncontested case stops being uncontested

Agreement, or a spouse's silence, can hold right up until a judge reviews the packet, and it can also come apart earlier. None of these outcomes mean the process failed. They mean the case genuinely needed the fuller procedure New York built for disputes.

• A spouse who defaulted shows up and contests it. Not answering within the response window isn't the same as giving up every right to be heard. A defendant who appears late with a real objection can pull the case off the undefended calendar.
• A hidden asset surfaces. New York divides marital property under equitable distribution, and an undisclosed account, business interest, or debt found after the fact can reopen a division that looked settled. Full financial honesty isn't optional, agreed or not.
• A custody or parenting-time disagreement emerges. Parents who agreed on the broad strokes sometimes discover, once a specific parenting-time schedule gets written out day by day, that they don't actually agree. That's a contested custody issue, and it needs the formal process built for it.
• A signed affirmation isn't the same as a signed judgment. Your spouse signing the Affirmation of Defendant only confirms they were served and won't contest the case. It isn't agreement to the specific terms in the settlement agreement. If the terms themselves stay unresolved, the judgment can't be signed.

When any of this happens, the honest answer is that the case needs a licensed New York attorney, not a workaround. New York's undefended track is built for genuine settlement or genuine non-response. Forcing a disputed case through it usually costs more time in the end than switching to the contested process correctly the first time.

What it costs

Because there's no discovery, no motion practice, and no trial, an undefended New York divorce typically runs to New York's statutory court fees, at least $335, plus whatever you spend getting the paperwork and the settlement agreement right, a fraction of what a contested case costs once litigation starts. See our New York divorce cost breakdown for the full numbers by path, or run your own figures with the divorce cost calculator.

The paperwork, briefly

An undefended case still carries a real packet: the Summons and Verified Complaint that open the case, the Affirmation of Defendant or Affirmation of Service that establishes your spouse's side, the Request for Judicial Intervention and Note of Issue that put the case on the calendar, and the Certificate of Dissolution the Department of Health requires in every New York divorce. The Judgment of Divorce is the document that actually records the settled terms, so its wording carries the most weight of anything in the packet, and it can't be signed until your settlement agreement is complete. Our complete guide to New York divorce papers covers what each form does, and our filing walkthrough covers the sequence end to end, from confirming residency through the judge's signature.

With children, briefly

Adding children to an undefended case doesn't change the definition, it adds more terms that have to be resolved before the judgment can be signed: custody, parenting time, and child support under New York's guideline formula all have to be settled, in writing, the same way property and maintenance do. These are also the terms most likely to unravel an otherwise undefended case, because a parenting-time schedule that sounded fine in conversation can look different once it's written out with specific days and holidays. Our New York divorce with children guide covers what those decisions involve and the forms they carry.

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