In a career now spanning more than 40 years, Stephen Gassman has long been regarded as one of the finest matrimonial attorneys in New York - and, indeed, one of the finest in the nation. He is the veteran of hundreds of complex divorce cases, and he leads a firm devoted exclusively to divorce law. Over the past two decades several attorneys have properly learned the law working for him.

The Roslyn, N.Y. native began his career in a court clerkship that exposed him early to divorce law - and to the double-barreled issues of asset-valuation and custody, which are central to most cases.

A prolific writer and lecturer over the years, Gassman is both personable and efficient -- and he has honed a reputation for thoroughness, precision and toughness. Such skills - he remains at the peak of his professional career - put him in great demand.

That of course has a downside: Gassman today takes on the only most complex cases involving the most challenging valuation issues, and he laments that has no choice but to turn away scores of other cases that come to him. “The straightforward cases can and should be handled by a less-expensive attorney,” he says. Today Gassman lives in Manhasset and Quogue.