Recording Law for Family Law in New York

New York is a one-party consent state for recording conversations. That means you can legally record any conversation you are part of, whether it’s in person, over the phone, or via electronic messages, without telling the other person. New York Penal Law §250.00 defines three separate offenses—wiretapping (§250.00(1)), mechanical overhearing of a conversation (§250.00(2)), and intercepting or accessing an electronic communication (§250.00(6))—each of which reaches only conduct by a non-participant who acts without any participant’s consent. Because a smartglasses wearer is ordinarily a first-person participant in whatever is captured, New York’s one-party rule applies uniformly to in-person conversations, telephone/telegraphic calls, and electronic communications. The same rule applies whether the conversation happens in your home, in public, or anywhere else. The only medium-confidence judicial gloss that could expand what a non-participant may record is the idea that a loud public conversation might lack a reasonable expectation of privacy, but this does not restrict your right as a participant.

New York Penal Law §250.00(2) defines the crime of “mechanical overhearing of a conversation” as intentionally recording a conversation without the consent of at least one party, using a device, when you are not present. The law contains no statutory requirement that the conversation be private or confidential—it covers any spoken exchange. A secondary-source gloss attributes to New York courts the view that a conversation loud enough to be freely overheard by a bystander may lack a reasonable expectation of privacy, but this gloss is only medium confidence and remains unresolved in New York case law. Separately, a confirmed primary-opinion excerpt shows that McLaughlin v. McLaughlin (4th Dep’t 2013), citing People v. Kirsh (1st Dep’t 1991), expanded the concept of “presence” to include a household member recording from another room within the same residence, a fact pattern distinct from the public-place “freely overheard” gloss. As a participant, you are not bound by these limits. The law treats your presence as enough to remove you from the scope of the recording ban entirely, no matter where the conversation takes place.

New York has a law, Civil Rights Law §79-p, that protects your right to record on-duty police officers in public. You can record police performing their duties in public places like streets or parks without their permission. However, on June 23, 2026, the New York Court of Appeals decided Reyes v. City of New York, holding that this protection does not extend to recording inside a police stationhouse or its lobby, even if the area is publicly accessible. The court also noted that federal courts in New York have not clearly recognized a constitutional right to record police in public. So, if you are recording police, only do so in clearly public outdoor settings. If you are unsure whether the location counts as public, treat it as off-limits unless a lawyer confirms it’s safe.

New York does not restrict silent, audio-less video recording in the ordinary ‘record what I see’ scenario. The state’s wiretapping law only applies to capturing the content of conversations: §250.00(1) covers telephonic or telegraphic communication (itself defined as an aural transfer), §250.00(2) covers conversations (inherently verbal exchanges), and §250.00(6) covers intercepting or accessing an electronic communication. Because these provisions are limited to aural or conversational content, filming a scene without recording sound is not covered by New York’s recording laws. There is a separate set of laws, Penal Law §§250.40–250.65, that prohibit surreptitious recording of people undressing or in private areas like bathrooms; for example, Penal Law §250.45 (Unlawful Surveillance in the Second Degree) is a class E felony and applies only to surreptitious recording of a person’s undressing, intimate body parts, or sexual conduct in a place carrying a reasonable expectation of privacy, done for sexual gratification, profit, degradation, or similar purposes. These provisions do not apply to ordinary video of public or semi-public scenes. So, if you only want to document what you see, not what you hear, you are free to do so without consent. A narrow edge case exists where smartglasses might silently intercept someone else’s already-existing electronic video transmission (e.g., a live video call); in that scenario, §250.00(6) could apply even without audio.

New York has no special rule that requires consent for recording conversations in your own home if you are a participant. The law treats your presence as enough to remove you from the scope of the recording ban. Courts have recognized that a parent can consent on behalf of a minor child in some situations (People v. Badalamenti, 27 N.Y.3d 423 (2016)), but this is a narrow exception based on the parent’s status, not the location. These ancillary points do not create a location-based restriction on your own recording. So, if you are part of the conversation at home, you can record without telling anyone else. The only caveat is if someone outside the conversation tries to record a private home talk, which could raise different issues—but that does not affect your rights as a participant.

Imagine you are picking up your child for a scheduled visit in a public park. Your co-parent becomes angry and starts yelling, making threats about future visits. You discreetly turn on your phone’s audio recorder to document what is said, without telling your co-parent. Under New York law, this is legal because you are part of the conversation and New York only requires one-party consent. If your co-parent later denies making the threats, the recording could be used as evidence in family court. The same would apply if you recorded a phone call about custody arrangements. Just remember: do not record inside a police stationhouse or lobby, as that is not protected under current New York law. If you are silently filming the scene without audio, New York law does not restrict that either; however, if your smartglasses were silently intercepting a live video call stream in the background, that would fall into the narrow edge case described above.