[awillen]

The issue with this seems to me to be that if you're having an amicable divorce, you don't need to spend a lot on lawyers anyway, so this doesn't really help. If you're having a contentious divorce, the other side's going to get a lawyer, so you need to get a lawyer too.

There's some language on your site that suggests that this can help you understand how your various assets will be treated in a divorce, which could be good if it's contentious, but if you have a lot of assets you're still going to want a lawyer.

I guess what I'm wondering is who your target audience is, as well as how you'd plan to monetize this?

[russellbeattie]

Oh, I disagree!

My ex and I split amicably and looked around for a facilitator to help with the paperwork. We hired a woman who seemed like she knew what she was doing, met with her, and as we had already been separated for years, we didn't think about it much and just sat back and waited. And waited. And waited. We'd call and she'd say she was waiting on the courts. Checking online would only get back some cryptic pending notice. After over a year and a half, we finally get a stern letter from the court, "Get your asses down here, the judge wants to speak to you idiots." (That's a summary, of course.)

What happened was the woman we hired had filled in the wrong county on all the forms. The court sent them back, with a note explaining the error. She submitted them again, untouched. They bounced the papers back to her. She did it twice more!!!

We had no idea until we're literally standing wide-eyed before the bench and the judge basically says (again, a summary), "Why are you two morons wasting the court's time? What the hell is wrong with you? Fix it. Or else."

Neither of us had been in court before, and my ex is from Spain and unfamiliar with American justice, so the experience was a tad intimidating, to say the least. There's a sense of seriousness in a court that really isn't something you regularly experience outside a funeral parlor. We immediately hired someone competent and were divorced within like 3 months.

So, I think this is actually a pretty useful service!

[awillen]

But that sounds like it has nothing to do with splitting assets, which is what this service is about. Your problem was with administrative legal tasks, and you hired someone who wasn't competent at them. You could still make the same mistake even if you were using this service.

[nickMMM]

We want to target people who are amicable (to start with). Definitely not anyone who is contentious. Hoping to expand to contentious divorces in the future of course (and help people actually negotiate without a lawyer). I would love the system to give prompts to people on whether they're asking for too much or if they're in the ballpark.

If you're amicable, there is still a lot of benefit in checking whether what you've agreed to divide with your spouse is fair from a legal perspective. You could be giving too much away. Eg. If you had a retirement/pension fund before the marriage, do you want to split that equally down the middle - no. You'll be entitled to keep a bigger slice of that (but you may have to give some away of course). Same with any other assets you had before the marriage, or inheritance you received during the marriage, or if you’ve used pre-marital funds to buy assets during the marriage. All these things could move it away from a 50/50 split.

Monetising will be the next step. We just want to figure out if this is useful for people first.

We have a few ideas, eg once Resolvy gives you the information (or prepares the divorce documents) we can advertise attorneys who can check everything for you to make sure it’s correct. We'll try keep it a free service for as long as we can (and figure out revenue models from businesses)

[awillen]

Thanks for the reply - this all makes sense, though I might considering changing the way you message it a bit. If you pitch it as a tool to check whether what you've already agreed upon is fair, then you potentially cause conflict if your assessment says the agreement isn't fair. Rather, it might be better as a starting point - if you don't know how to divide your assets, this tool will tell you what the law would default to, and then you can adjust from there.

Just two cents from a random guy on the internet!

[nickMMM]

thank you - appreciated it :)