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Wevorce (YC W13) makes divorce suck less

wefunder.com

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Re: Wevorce (YC W13) makes divorce suck less

#101

Post by mikesickler »

Just got divorced for the 2nd time last week (what can I say? It's a gift), and what I'd really like to see is a web app that does the following:

Give parents and extended family tools to better manage their split parenting work, from parenting schedules, to birthday wish lists, to the child’s clothing sizes, favorite foods, etc.

- Enable the family on one side to be engaged with the life of the child when the child is with the other parent.

- Help the child avoid feeling as if they have “two separate lives”.

- Function as an intermediary between both sides, with focus solely on the child, thus allowing them to cooperate with each other without danger of confrontation. Seeing Nana on Dad’s side communicating and cooperating with Mommy benefits the child greatly.

- Ideally, this technology-assisted “virtual” cooperation in time will serve as a bridge to real-life cooperation and engagement, healing, forgiveness, and understanding.

Features

- Each parent and child can post their work/holiday/event/school/sports schedule

- Track parenting time

- Keep a diary of the child’s activities (food, health, etc) to share with the other parent

- Track shopping lists and assign who buys what (Christmas, bday, etc)

- Track contact info (school, coaches, etc), clothing sizes, etc.

- Share important documents (report cards, etc)

- Share videos, pictures, audio messages, text messages with parents and extended family

- Q&A and community support for parents

- Allow for indirect phone calls between parties who don’t want to share their phone numbers, or chat video the web site.

- Allow for translations to be added to videos and messages.

Re: Wevorce (YC W13) makes divorce suck less

#102

Post by j-reynolds »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #97

At least in Minnesota, there is a trend towards attorneys who practice Collaborative Divorce and I'm told it's spreading across the country rapidly. How does Wevorce fit in with this?

Great question. I'm Jeff, with Wevorce. Collaborative Divorce actually started to catch on in the '80s and does some great work. The trouble is that it is more expensive and unstructured. Just coordinating schedules of the various professionals can several hours in fees. That's one of the problems our system fixes. These sorts of issues meant it spread rapidly at first, but has struggle gaining new converts lately.

Actually, most of our mediators (we call them Divorce Architects) come from a Collaborative Law background.

Re: Wevorce (YC W13) makes divorce suck less

#103

Post by j-reynolds »

Pinatubo wrote: post #100
Jplenbrook wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a scientific study you are absolutely correct, however, this is a business and in business you only deal with the self-selecting group that would use your service. The better question would be what percentage of the market would actually use this service, especially knowing that it has and over 99% success rate. In my experience women often want a fast divorce and men want a cheap one so if she can provide that s…

I think asking whether wevorce provides any benefit to its customers is also a pretty good question. This is why the self-selection problem is important. 99% of wevorce users don't go to court, but is that an improvement over the baseline percentage for the kinds of couples that would use wevorce?

Thanks for the question (I'm with Wevorce). I think you're right, that self-selection does contribute to our very high success rate. But the fact is, we definitely see our share of contentious situations and are able to help them too. Since we know that even some of the folks who want an amicable divorce at the beginning are turned hostile by the grind of the traditional system, we don't see self-selection as "a problem." We're happy for amicable divorces anyway they come.

The benefit to our customers goes well beyond signing the papers. There's a strong education and co-parenting/budgeting tool component which, clients tell us, brings way more value than the legal aspect of ending a marriage.

Re: Wevorce (YC W13) makes divorce suck less

#104

Post by j-reynolds »

mikesickler wrote: post #101

Just got divorced for the 2nd time last week (what can I say? It's a gift), and what I'd really like to see is a web app that does the following: Give parents and extended family tools to better manage their split parenting work, from parenting schedules, to birthday wish lists, to the child’s clothing sizes, favorite foods, etc. - Enable the family on one side to be engaged with the life of the child when the child…

Great feedback, mikesickler. I'm one of the founders and I can tell you that your requests are in the planning stages. Our vision is help families build sustainable lives over the long-term (I'm 38 and I still get uncomfortable when my divorced parents are in the same room). The tool you describe will be part of it.

I'll share your comment with the rest of the team so we can add some of these to our features list. Thanks!

Re: Wevorce (YC W13) makes divorce suck less

#105

Post by ajju »

mrkurt wrote: post #99
ajju wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no experience, so please excuse this if it's insensitive, but isn't the difference between adopting and being a foster parent the fact that as a foster parent you are only a temporary guardian for the child? i.e. they usually have parents they would go back to eventually?

Not insensitive at all. Fostering is just the first step, and can be followed by a formal adoption. Our three adoptions were foster for ~2 years as the case made its way through the courts (we got all the kids at Depending on the situation, kids can go back with their biological parents. The social worker should be pretty up front about the prospects of that, though. Of the 5 kids we've fostered, 2 went back to their…

Thank you for sharing. I have thought about adoption and it helps to learn more.

Both adopting and fostering are a huge responsibility, and it speaks volumes about you guys that you have done it multiple times.

Re: Wevorce (YC W13) makes divorce suck less

#106

Post by strevat »

bambax wrote: post #86
curiousdannii wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the opposite -- the ligatures seem like they're supposed to make the company look fancy, but when combined with the photos of the founders I just felt creeped out.

I also immediately noticed the ligatures and found them disturbing too. I'm not sure I can explain why but I'll try. It may be because the first and most prominent ligature is in the title... and the word "suck" - ligatures are unusual, even in print, let alone on the web => they're distracting (I found myself chasing them on the page to see if they were also in the article -- turns out they're only used in some subt…

I agree with this - thanks a lot for the feedback.

We're going through the flow and experimenting with a lot of type choices, and your point about the tone really rings with me. I expect to put ChunkFive on the bench soon, to be replaced by something with a little less angst, though I expect it to still be a slab-serif. As far as Abril Display (what we're using for headings on these featured startup pages) is currently used, we could improve. I think the actual use of ligatures helps give a bowtie look, but it's not necessarily what we're looking to do. The tone of the brand going forward will be key for that decision. IMO Abril Text, being used for the body copy, is a good typeface for long format reading. Though however I try to justify it, we've got some serious typeface gloat happening, and we'll start to see them tightening up over the next few releases.

Thanks again, much appreciated thoughts.

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