Online Gambling A Growing Factor In US Divorces, Family Lawyer Says
A New York matrimonial lawyer says online gambling is showing up more often as a factor in US divorce cases, even without hard national data yet proving a causal link between the two.
A Family Lawyer's View
“I think we are seeing the same phenomenon in the United States,” Atty Bruggemann, a partner at New York firm Gallet Dreyer & Berkey, told CasinoBeats.
“While I would not claim that online gambling is responsible for a measurable percentage of American divorces, I absolutely believe it is becoming an increasingly important factor contributing to divorce,” Bruggemann said.
There is insufficient national data to prove causation, but mobile sportsbooks and casino apps make betting “dramatically more accessible” than in the retail-only era.
Helpline Data Shows The Same Shift
The comments follow the National Problem Gambling Helpline's own 2025 annual report, published by the National Council on Problem Gambling, which found that online and app-based gambling accounted for 31% of contacts in 2025, up from 23% in 2024, while concerns about traditional slot machines and electronic gaming fell from 36% to 31% of contacts over the same period.
More than 73% of contacts to the helpline cited financial struggles as their reason for reaching out, up from 66% in 2024, with mental health concerns (32%) and relationship problems (22%) rounding out the top three motivators.
Discovery Battles And Legal Gaps
Bruggemann said the pattern she sees in matrimonial cases is rarely a single bad bet. “I am less concerned with whether someone placed one bad bet than with the pattern: secret accounts, repeated withdrawals, credit-card debt, loans from family members, unexplained transfers, and money that was supposed to pay the mortgage, taxes, tuition, or household expenses disappearing into a betting platform,” she told CasinoBeats. She described divorces caused by gambling as often rooted in a breakdown of trust rather than the financial loss itself.
The accessibility of mobile betting also creates practical pressure for divorce lawyers, Bruggemann said. “If one spouse continues gambling after learning that a divorce is imminent, the other spouse and counsel may need to move quickly to protect assets and obtain financial information.”
She called for greater transparency from online casino and betting operators regarding lawful matrimonial discovery requests. “If a spouse is claiming that tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars were lost, lawyers should be able to obtain a reliable transaction history without having to engage in unnecessarily complicated discovery battles,” she said.
Bruggemann also argued that judges and matrimonial lawyers need to build up their own knowledge of gambling disorders, digital gambling technology and digital currencies to keep pace with how cases are now presenting.
The US comments echo a pattern already documented elsewhere: courts in Indonesia have separately reported a rise in divorce filings tied to online gambling addiction.
With the National Problem Gambling Helpline recording its steepest year-on-year jump yet in app-based complaints, family law may be one of the clearer real-world signals of how mobile betting habits are affecting households, even where the statistics cannot yet isolate gambling as a standalone cause.
Read more in our US gambling news.
Refer to Cashback Terms & Conditions for full program terms.
