A new report published in New York reveals that waiting times in the city's family courts have significantly decreased in 2025. This comprehensive analysis, prepared by the advocacy organization Her Justice, which helps women in poverty overcome legal barriers, examined data covering a six-year period. The report shows that newly implemented court reforms have been effective in accelerating child support processes. However, it also remains a fact that cases in the city still take twice as long to complete compared to the rest of the state. This situation is directly linked to the city's massive case volume and heavy workload.
According to the detailed findings of the report, while it takes an average of 6.7 months to complete a child support case in New York City, this period is only 2.8 months in other parts of the state. Despite this striking difference, the time it takes to reach a child support order determining how much a parent must pay for their child showed a significant decline across the city in 2025. While the average waiting time in Brooklyn Family Court between 2022 and 2024 was over 15 months, by 2025 this period surprisingly dropped to as low as four months. This improvement is considered concrete proof of how efficiently the system within the courthouse can be made with the right interventions.
The most significant factor behind this noticeable acceleration is shown to be a new court reform known as "triage" (prioritization). The system in question was first implemented as a pilot program in Brooklyn and, following successful results, was expanded to other boroughs of the city last year. In this innovative process, court administrators get involved in cases at a very early stage to assess family dynamics and guide the parties toward a settlement where appropriate. This method, which resembles the policies of the Her Justice organization, aims to create an expedited reconciliation process for families who reach an agreement on child support. Thus, the goal is to resolve cases before they enter a legal marathon that could take years.
Not only Brooklyn, but other densely populated boroughs of the city such as the Bronx and Queens have also experienced similar improvements. In the one-year period from 2024 to 2025, case durations in the Bronx shortened by an average of five months, and in Queens by three months. The success of these reforms is also closely related to the goal of increasing the transparency of child support processes, which form a vital safety net especially for low-income parents. Nevertheless, the system is said to still be filled with massive obstacles; according to court system data, more than 90 percent of parents are forced to navigate these complex legal processes on their own without any attorney representation. Her Justice emphasizes that this situation catches families off guard and makes it difficult to achieve justice in the process.
Across New York state, more than 130,000 child support cases filed in 2025 constitute nearly one-third of all family court filings. These massive figures demonstrate how complex and exhausting the process can be. While the parent with primary custody of the child usually applies to the court to request child support, support judges assigned to the cases finalize the decision. Following the initial child support order, reapplying to have this order modified due to changes in the parties' financial circumstances is one of the most frequently encountered situations. The report also notably suggests that the data for these modification requests should be examined more deeply in the future, due to their profound and lasting effects on parents' lives.
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