California’s divorce professionals, verified.
Real attorneys, mediators, CDFAs and therapists — credentials checked against California’s own official directories, not paid placement.
See a different stateCalifornia
Every professional below is currently at the Listed tier: credentials independently verified from an official California source, automatically included whether they’ve opted into The Cusp or not — the same way a bar association directory works. Nobody here has paid for placement, and none of them have published pricing or been reviewed yet.
What “verified” means on this page
Not every check is the same check, and most directories hide that. Every listing below says which kind it was, and the date we did it — because a license check is a photograph, not a guarantee. Somebody confirmed in August can be suspended in September.
- State registerChecked against the state’s own licensing, court or bar record.
- Issuing bodyChecked against the organization that grants this credential — authoritative for the credential, but it is their own list.
- Membership listingA membership directory. Joining is voluntary, and this is not a license check.
- Self-reportedTaken from this person’s own website. Nobody independent confirmed it, and we are re-checking these against an official register.
- Source linkedChecked against the source linked, which is not a state register.
Nobody paid to be listed here, and nobody can. Listings are not for sale, and no professional on this page has paid us anything to appear on it or to appear higher on it. If we are ever paid in connection with anyone listed here, it will say so on this page, next to that listing. Most of these were confirmed against a state register. A small number were not, and rather than quietly presenting those as equivalent, they are marked and we are re-checking them.
The short version5 points · tap one to jump to it
- Family law & divorce attorneys — Verified active against the State Bar of California's official Attorney Search tool.
- Divorce mediators — California has no single statewide mediator certification — verified via the Academy of Professional Family Mediators' public directory, a recognized credentialing body.
- Certified Divorce Financial Analysts (CDFAs) — Not included yet. California licensed therapists/counselors with a divorce or co-parenting focus.
- What these professionals typically cost in California — See the main directory page for the full regional cost breakdown across all four professional types.
- Child & adolescent therapists — A child or adolescent focus is taken from the professional’s own public description of their practice; the license status is the independently-verified part.
In this subject 5
Family law & divorce attorneys
Verified active against the State Bar of California’s official Attorney Search tool.
Divorce mediators
California has no single statewide mediator certification — verified via the Academy of Professional Family Mediators’ public directory, a recognized credentialing body.
Certified Divorce Financial Analysts (CDFAs)
Pulled from the Institute for Divorce Financial Analysts’ own public directory of credentialed CDFA professionals practicing in California.
Not included yet. California licensed therapists/counselors with a divorce or co-parenting focus. The state’s official Board of Behavioral Sciences license-verification tool (search.dca.ca.gov) is gated by a bot-detection challenge that couldn’t be completed through automated or interactive tools without bypassing it — which The Cusp’s research rules don’t permit. Several real practitioners were identified from their own public practice listings, but their license status could not be independently confirmed against the official database, so none are published here. Flagged for a manual verification pass.
What these professionals typically cost in California
California falls in the West region on The Cusp’s cost model — illustrative, member-reported ranges, not an official fee survey or a quote.
| Item | Reported range |
|---|---|
| Attorney, uncontested | $1,200–$4,000 |
| Attorney, contested | $6,000–$28,000+ |
| Mediator, full case | $120–$400/hr |
See the main directory page for the full regional cost breakdown across all four professional types.
Child & adolescent therapists
For the children in this, not the adults. Every license below was confirmed against California Board of Behavioral Sciences and California Board of Psychology — never the federal NPI registry, whose license fields are supplied by providers rather than confirmed by a board. A child or adolescent focus is taken from the professional’s own public description of their practice; the license status is the independently-verified part.
Know someone in California who needs this?
Sending one person a straight answer about money is more useful than most advice. Nothing here asks for their real name, and nobody finds out they looked.
Doing your own California filing instead?
The California Divorce Kit has the exact forms, deadlines, and rejection traps for your county.
The rest of what we have written about California. Every figure is quoted from California’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Everybody on this page charges for their time. If money is the constraint — and for most people reading this it is — these two come first, and we earn nothing from either.
- LawHelpCA.org — free civil legal help for people who qualify on income.
- Judicial Council of California — Self-Help Guide — the court’s own self-help material, free to everybody regardless of income.
Divorce coaches are not in this directory, and here is why
Everyone above holds a license a state regulator can take away. “Divorce coach” is not a protected title — in California or anywhere else — so there is no license to check and no regulator to check it with.
We read each certifying body’s own website looking for one thing: a published route by which a coach can lose the credential. Of the three divorce-specific credentials we examined, not one publishes a disciplinary process a client could actually use.
That is not a reason never to hire one. A coach is cheaper than a lawyer for the things that are not legal problems, and a great deal of what costs people money in a divorce is not a legal problem. It is a reason to know what the credential does and does not mean before you pay anybody.
What the credential actually means · What to ask before you pay · How this directory is ordered
Every agent we introduce in California is divorce-trained and vetted
Most agents are competent and most have never handled a divorce sale — two clients who may not be speaking, a court order neither was told about, a closing date somebody else controls. So we do not list agents. We introduce one, and only after they have cleared four things:
- a license we checked ourselves with the regulator, with no unresolved discipline;
- six closed sales in the last two years, from their own MLS records;
- 4.7 or better across every site they are reviewed on, at least ten reviews;
- our divorce real estate training and its twenty-question assessment.
Then we check on you, not on them — at seven days and again at six months.
Ask for an introduction* · The standards in full · Four questions to ask any agent · Agents: get certified
* Hyleri, who writes this site, is a licensed agent with Compass and may receive a referral fee from the introduced agent’s commission if a sale completes — never added to what you pay. How we make money.