ATTORNEY ADVERTISING NOTICE. This profile was researched and written independently by Awesome Attorneys’ editorial team. It was not paid for, commissioned, or reviewed prior to publication by the firm profiled. All case results, recoveries, and recognitions described below are attributed to their sources. Past results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future matter. This article is for general information only and is not legal advice; reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship.

Goranson Bain Ausley: The Dallas Family Law Attorney Firm With 31 Board-Certified Specialists Statewide

Goranson Bain Ausley is a Dallas family law attorney practice built from a 2018 merger of two 40-year-old Texas firms — now the largest family-law-exclusive firm in the state, with seven board-certified attorneys, including two former judges, in its Dallas office alone.

Goranson Bain Ausley — Dallas Family Law Attorney At a Glance

Sources: gbfamilylaw.com (firm website), Best Lawyers, D Magazine, State Bar of Texas attorney directory, Super Lawyers. Compiled August 2026.

Origin: Two 40-Year Firms Becoming One

Goranson Bain Ausley’s scale traces to two independently established, long-running Texas family law firms. Thomas P. Goranson and Angeline L. Bain founded GoransonBain in Dallas in 1987. Separately, Thomas L. Ausley — after honing trial skills at a large Austin firm — opened his own practice in the late 1970s (1978, per the firm’s merger announcement), which grew into Ausley, Algert, Robertson & Flores, a leading Central Texas family law firm. In 2018, the two firms merged as what Managing Partner Curtis W. Harrison described at the time as “a choice rather than a necessity,” combining shared values around constructive resolution rather than scrambling to solve a capacity problem.

The combined firm’s leadership record is unusually dense with institutional bar credentials: the firm includes an attorney who serves as immediate past President of the State Bar of Texas, and seven past Chairs of the State Bar’s Family Law Section — leadership roles that require election or appointment by peers across the entire state bar, not a marketing credential. Thomas L. Ausley separately received the Sam Emison Award from the Texas Academy of Family Law Specialists in 2013, a lifetime-achievement-tier honor in the specialty.

Where the Firm Concentrates

The firm practices family law exclusively across the full range of matters: divorce, high-net-worth property division, business and professional practice valuation disputes, child custody and support, prenuptial and postnuptial agreements, military divorce, collaborative divorce, mediation, and family law appeals — a specific appellate specialty most family law firms don’t maintain in-house. The Dallas office specifically serves Dallas County and the surrounding communities of Highland Park, University Park, Lakewood, and Preston Hollow, with seven TBLS-certified family law attorneys and two former family court judges on staff, whose bench experience the firm markets as giving clients a judge’s-eye view of how a case will actually be received in court. Readers comparing options can see how this profile fits alongside other Family Law & Divorce attorneys covered on Awesome Attorneys.

Notable Work

As with other family law firms, individual case outcomes are typically confidential and not published as dollar figures. The clearest evidence of the firm’s standing is structural rather than case-by-case: three consecutive years ranked the #1 family law firm in both the Austin/San Antonio and Dallas/Fort Worth markets by Texas Lawyer, Tier 1 rankings in Best Lawyers’ “Best Law Firms” for Family Law and Family Law Mediation in Dallas since 2011, and 39 firm attorneys listed in The Best Lawyers in America — a scale of peer recognition that’s uncommon even among large family law practices.

Client Voice

Client reviews are distributed across individual attorneys’ pages rather than a single firm-wide testimonials page, consistent with a firm this large. Representative examples from the Dallas office:

“Forget any negative things you have heard about divorce attorneys! I feel very fortunate to have found Ryan Bauerle at GoransonBain Ausley.” — client review

“My dealings with Karen Bryson and Brenda Aranda with the Goranson Bain Ausley Law Firm has been fabulous in a very difficult and trying situation. Never once did I have any doubt that their consultation was incorrect or faulty. They kept me informed and involved.” — client review

These are drawn from the firm’s public review pages; Awesome Attorneys did not independently verify reviewer identities, a standard limitation across attorney review platforms.

Beyond the Courtroom

The firm’s most distinctive “beyond the courtroom” credential is institutional rather than charitable: a partner’s service as immediate past President of the State Bar of Texas, and seven attorneys’ past service as Chairs of the State Bar’s Family Law Section, represent sustained leadership of the profession’s own governing and specialty bodies at the statewide level — a different category of involvement than local board seats or sponsorships, though the firm’s individual attorneys also hold typical bar-section memberships and community affiliations documented on their individual pages.

Recognition

The strongest credentials here are the 31 firm-wide TBLS board certifications (2 of them dual-certified in Family Law and Civil Appellate Law) and the AAML fellowships (14 attorneys) — both tested and peer-evaluated. Best Lawyers in America inclusion (39 attorneys) and Super Lawyers selections are peer-nomination-based, not pay-to-play. By contrast, the firm’s Texas Lawyer “#1 Family Law Firm” rankings and D Magazine directory placements are trade-publication rankings and directory listings rather than individually tested credentials — a real and credible form of recognition, but built on a different methodology than the TBLS certification itself.

Texas Legal Backdrop

The same structural rules apply to any Texas family law matter, presented as general information and not legal advice. Texas requires six months’ domicile in the state and 90 days in the filing county before a divorce petition can be filed (Tex. Fam. Code § 6.301), and imposes a mandatory 60-day waiting period after filing before a divorce can be finalized, with a family-violence exception (Tex. Fam. Code § 6.702). Texas’s community property system presumes property and debt acquired during the marriage belongs to both spouses, subject to a “just and right” division — directly relevant to this firm’s business-valuation specialty, since a closely held business or professional practice acquired or grown during the marriage is typically community property subject to division (Tex. Fam. Code §§ 3.002–3.003). Divorce may proceed on the no-fault ground of insupportability (Tex. Fam. Code § 6.001). Custody is decided under a best-interest-of-the-child standard (Tex. Fam. Code ch. 153), and child support follows statutory guideline percentages (Tex. Fam. Code § 154.125). Appeals from a family court’s final judgment in Texas generally must be filed within 30 days of the judgment, or within 90 days if certain post-judgment motions were timely filed (Tex. R. App. P. 26.1) — the deadline most relevant to the firm’s dedicated appellate practice.

Awesome Attorneys Assessment

Goranson Bain Ausley’s differentiator is scale combined with genuine specialization: the largest family-law-exclusive firm in Texas, with more board-certified attorneys in one firm than most competitors have on their entire staff, plus a dedicated appellate practice and two former judges in the Dallas office specifically. For a high-net-worth divorce involving business valuation, or a case likely to face an appeal, that combination of resources is difficult for a smaller firm to match.

The honest trade-off is the one that comes with any large, multi-office institution: a prospective client should ask specifically which attorney would handle their case and confirm that attorney’s individual board certification and experience, since the firm’s statewide statistics (31 board-certified attorneys, 14 AAML fellows) describe the institution rather than any single assigned attorney. Clients who prioritize a smaller firm’s consistent, single-point-of-contact model over the largest possible bench may find a boutique practice a better personal fit, even if it can’t match this firm’s institutional scale.

Methodology & Sourcing

This profile was researched and written independently by Awesome Attorneys’ editorial team in August 2026. Primary sources: the firm’s own published website (gbfamilylaw.com) and the State Bar of Texas’s public attorney directory, which confirmed no public disciplinary history for firm founder Thomas P. Goranson. Secondary sources: Best Lawyers, D Magazine, Super Lawyers, BCGSearch, and the firm’s 2018 merger announcement. The firm did not commission, pay for, or pre-approve this article. All credentials and claims are attributed to their sources; past results do not guarantee or predict future outcomes. This article is general information, not legal advice.

Publisher Disclosure & Independence Notice

Facts, figures, and claims in this profile were independently researched from public sources as described in the Methodology & Sourcing section above and are current only as of the research date; they are subject to change without notice, and readers should confirm any detail directly with the firm before relying on it. This notice supplements, and does not replace, the Attorney Advertising Notice at the top of this profile.