Separate.Us
A supportive DIY divorce solution
9 months
Solution for divorce process
Web development
Web
Saving time & money
Simple a complicated process
Easier, Cheaper
About
Project Idea
Separate.us is an online divorce assistant developed to help people complete all of the boring and dull paperwork by asking simple and understandable questions.
Wireframes
Separate.us is meant to be convenient and easy to use so we implemented it on the wireframes.
Technology Stack
Sandro Tuzzo
Divorce lawyer
The story behind
The divorce process in the USA is a true pain in the neck even if a marriage didn’t last long – and for long-term relationships, it can turn into a total disaster. You must uphold all federal and state laws and take into account literally everything you’ve been through during your family life.
The average cost of hiring an attorney is around $15,000, which is unaffordable for many people, so Sandro Tuzzo, a divorce lawyer, decided to simplify the process and make it much cheaper.
TechCrunch Disrupt 2015
This startup project participated in The Startup Battlefield of the TechCrunch Disrupt 2015 in San Francisco and was one of the finalists of the competition.
Challenges and Solutions
There was quite a list of challenges for us to consider while developing Separate.us. We found solutions to all of them and here is what we did for it.
Complex decision tree
Problem:
A lot of factors influence the divorce process in California, and all of them should be taken into account. It greatly increases the number of questions and possible answers, so that makes the decision tree really big and complicated. The experience should yet stay “real-time-like."
Solution:
We used graph databases to represent and store data.
Different PDF files to autofill
Problem:
American courts have standard questions to be answered for the divorce forms. But the PDF files for the same forms are different in different courts (and sometimes they are also poorly printed) what made their autofill quite a complicated task.
Solution:
We used CMS, where all the possible dialogs were built into a decision tree. After that, the dialogs were rendered and put into a database to save time and speed up the answer.
Results
Our team developed a smart online platform for people to deal with exhausting divorce paperwork. Separate.us made a complicated and expensive divorce process in California very simple and affordable.