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New divorce app to help couples split assets in New York without lawyers

resolvy.com

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Re: New divorce app to help couples split assets in New York without lawyers

#51
post #6
post #2

We just launched Resolvy. It helps anyone going through a divorce understand what portion of the assets they can keep, and what portion is to be divided with their spouse. Deals with child support and alimony too. Currently only works in New York. Free to use. Can save Anyone going through a divorce in New York on legal fees.

Great work! Keep in mind that you're showing this to a tough crowd.

thank you for the support

Re: New divorce app to help couples split assets in New York without lawyers

#52
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever been through a divorce? Splitting assets equally is an after thought for most folks. They (or the one that filled) just want to get the thing over with, quickly, and a lawyer makes that happen.

I have not personally (still happily) married. My cofounder went through a divorce. He is a divorce lawyer (and his wife at the time a lawyer too). They divided everything smoothly - sounded like it was quite clinical and unemotional from what he told me. Say if you brought assets into the relationship, a house, retirement fund fund, an inheritance. I’m sure you don’t want your ex-partner to get half of that. You’re…

> You’re entitled to keep a larger portion of it (as you get a credit for it).

Doesn't this depend on if you have a pre-nup especially in states like CA? I got married super early and had to divide everything equally even though I earned much more than my spouse.

Re: New divorce app to help couples split assets in New York without lawyers

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever been through a divorce? Splitting assets equally is an after thought for most folks. They (or the one that filled) just want to get the thing over with, quickly, and a lawyer makes that happen.

This doesn’t sound right at all. The classic story is “he/she took me to the cleaners”, fighting over every possible asset, being forced to sell a house or property you don’t want to because the spouse demands half. I don’t know the frequency but it happens. My own parents fought hard over the house in particular and my mother ended up having to buy my father out at a huge loss to avoid selling it.

Divorce does force people to make tough choices. Both people are entitled to a share of the assets they jointly accumulated over time, separate their finances and make a fresh start independently. Keeping or selling the house (the biggest asset) is a hard decision. Selling often means disrupting the lives of the children etc. If property has negative equity, then it becomes even more challenging. In NY, couples can enter into an agreement where they keep joint ownership of the house for a while (eg until the kids grow up). This can only work if they’re amicable. Lots of people don’t want to continue holding a joint mortgage with their ex-partner, so it’s often a decision between sell the house or one person taking over the mortgage.

Re: New divorce app to help couples split assets in New York without lawyers

#54
post #31
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

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 de…

thank you - appreciated it :)

Re: New divorce app to help couples split assets in New York without lawyers

#55

Separately, as advice to potential couples: get a pre-nup. Resolves any awkward beliefs about money up front. Discloses assets and liabilities so no financial skeletons in the closet. Establishes who has what before the nuptials and frankly fast forwards your relationship to see if it is strong enough to handle a "difficult" conversation and negotiation. Lets you establish what claims your spouse will have to your fu…

completely agree!

Re: New divorce app to help couples split assets in New York without lawyers

#56
post #15

In one of his books, Gerald Weinberg said that his sister decided that it was time to give up divorce work when one of her clients (or the client's adversary) produced a list of goods for partition including a partly used container of dish soap under the sink. And my brother (a lawyer) told me of an attorney in the Mountain West who gave up divorce work as too stressful and went on to defending clients on capital cha…

My decision to at least exclude family law, beyond the divorce of my parents when I was a teenager being fairly ugly (although now with a larger sample size I've observed, relatively tame), was cemented by sitting through a whole session where the only property that needed to be split were a pair of season tickets to my school's men's college basketball team. While the school's team is quite good, we've never won a championship, at the time of the proceedings we've only been AP #1 for a week and then was almost knocked out of the tourney by a 16 seed, and in open court both parties acknowledged that they don't go to all of the home games and are seeing other season ticket holders, meaning that neither party needed to have both sets of tickets just to go watch the games live. The only advantage is that the seats would be together, but I've been to a lot of games of just about every North American professional sport (yes, including Arena Football) and seat swapping is ubiquitous whether the place is sold out or a quarter full. I've litigated my own case in small claims court and can honestly say that there were cases far more consequential there than the acrimonious splitting of a pair of basketball season tickets. It's not exactly kafkaesque - the criminal justice system fits the bill better - but it's at least... Dadaist in an un-self-aware way? I've appeared in undergraduate musicals written by my classmates that were less cringeworthy than that.

And I've practiced administrative law which, since they are not established under Article III of the Constitution, can be pretty cowboy and roughshod. I've also appeared in tribal court which seem to frequently take cues from TV courts. But they are not frivolous, not at all. Administrative hearings can and do determine the liberty of people every day. Same for tribal courts. There's something farcical about all 3 types of proceedings but family court just hits the perfect note of "legitimate", "important", and "farcical" to me, even though they are undoubtedly important. I can assure you that no immigration or NLRB hearings, the administrative courts in this country with teeth, sink into farce at a similar rate.

At one point there were some half-joking talks about finding an agreeable local tribe to partner with us to open a startup that allow same-day in-app divorces. Sadly even with introductions and approaching tribes in several states they all ended up saying no. There's a free idea for y'all, business-wise, if you can pull it off.

Re: New divorce app to help couples split assets in New York without lawyers

#57
Does this handle potential alimony? That’s the thing that scares me about getting divorced. A friend of mine confided in me that their partner hasn’t worked since they been married and is afraid that ending the relationship would put them in a deep alimony situation. Unfortunate side effect of living in a high cost are sure but I understand their frustration

Re: New divorce app to help couples split assets in New York without lawyers

#58

Does this handle potential alimony? That’s the thing that scares me about getting divorced. A friend of mine confided in me that their partner hasn’t worked since they been married and is afraid that ending the relationship would put them in a deep alimony situation. Unfortunate side effect of living in a high cost are sure but I understand their frustration

Yep it calculates alimony payments (called spousal maintenance in NY). It's based on income, length of relationship etc. In NY, you can actually negotiate out of alimony (eg trade it for some more assets).

Re: New divorce app to help couples split assets in New York without lawyers

#59
Feedback about your web site: there are still plenty of people out there using browsers that don't support WebP. None of your images load for me (Safari 15.5 on macOS Catalina). You should use (or at least fall back to) wider-supported formats.

Re: New divorce app to help couples split assets in New York without lawyers

#60

Feedback about your web site: there are still plenty of people out there using browsers that don't support WebP. None of your images load for me (Safari 15.5 on macOS Catalina). You should use (or at least fall back to) wider-supported formats.

Didn't even think of that. Thank you! I'll get that fixed
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