
Wevorce (YC W13) makes divorce suck less - sochanger
https://wefunder.com/wevorce
======
liber8
I enjoyed how her profile danced around Wevorce's raison d'etre, without
actually coming out and saying it: acrimonious divorces are fueled (or created
entirely) by lawyers.

As a lawyer with many colleagues practicing family law, I don't think this is
terribly fair. Divorces are acrimonious because the overwhelming majority of
divorcees have fundamental issues with their spouse that they can't even
verbalize, let alone work out. The underlying feelings that trigger the
explosive fights about nothing (think toilet seats or dishes in the sink) are
only magnified when blame for failure of the marriage and the dividing of
assets/children comes into play. In other words: divorce is acrimonious
because people going through divorce literally go crazy.

I would bet Wevorce is successful because it integrates
counseling/communication into the divorce process, something that is basically
prohibited when both sides are represented by counsel. That alone sounds like
a substantial improvement.

~~~
samstave
As someone who went through a bitter, totally unfair, divorce - I agree that
lawyers can be POS in these situations.

I was belittled, laughed at, threatened and completely farked over by my ex's
lawyer. They drew out the process an incredible amount. Why? Because I was
paying all of her legal fees.

Every single court appearance they had a different attorney show up - if they
bothered to show up. I am still extremely bitter over the whole process and
pray I never run into any of those lawyers in person on the street.

Nothing has made me so close to extreme actions as has those complete thieves.
I still hold a special place in my heart for revenge against that company.

~~~
vishaldpatel
Was it a personal or legal that you paid for your ex's fees?

------
nostromo
Hey HN: (while we're discussing family law) someone please make a startup that
improves adoptions and/or surrogacy.

The fees are intense. $20k, 50k, 100k gets dropped left and right in this
space. (Never underestimate the human drive to reproduce!) Most of that goes
to agencies (who do good work, but incredibly inefficiently) and to foreign
governments (if international). All to adopt kids that need a good home.

Navigating these waters is intense and difficult. There are so many hucksters,
scams, multiple government bureaucracies, lawyers, clinics, and way too many
options to make sense of things. It's a nightmare.

This is my pain point right now; I'll be your first customer!

Regardless, congrats to Wevorce for taking on family law.

~~~
mrkurt
I heartily recommend becoming a foster parent through your state
children/family services agency. It's an oft overlooked route to adoption and,
despite a million frustrations of its own, has worked much better for us than
private adoption seems to/would have.

~~~
ajju
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?

~~~
mrkurt
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 <1mo old).

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 parents and we were
well aware of that before we took them (they were 3 and 6 years old). Usually
when infants are removed from a home, there's not much chance of them
returning.

~~~
ajju
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.

------
avolcano
"Wevorce is already having success. While living in Idaho, Michelle ran a beta
test. She put 104 families through the system and only one went to court."

This was the part that was most surprising to me. That's an incredibly good
success rate (albiet with a small test) for something that's trying to mediate
such a polarized situation. All it takes is either party not being satisfied
with what they got to push it to court, so it must be extremely good at
helping both sides feel comfortable with the outcome.

~~~
Pinatubo
Careful: there's also a self-selection effect here. Only those couples who
have a fairly good chance at a somewhat amicable separation would even try a
service like this. Wevorce would probably have a much lower success rate with
104 randomly selected families going through divorce.

~~~
Jplenbrook
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 she has a winning business proposition.

~~~
Pinatubo
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?

~~~
j-reynolds
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.

------
eksith
Really? This is what it's come down to? Parenting and separation via day-
planner. No wonder so many of my friends aren't getting married.

A common law marriage is likely to last a lot longer these days since, well,
it's not common law unless you've been together for a while. Sometimes years.

This is also another reason why parents who ignore their children's feelings
when getting a divorce are a bunch of inconsiderate bastards. You can argue
all you want about how things are just not working out, but unless one of you
is abusive or reckless, there are no _irreconcilable differences_. You just
suck at getting along with each other and you should have thought about that
more before having kids.

Got to therapy, go to counselling, try anything to hold it off until your kids
are at least older teenagers.

Wanna know what's _really_ destroying the sanctity of marriage? Abuse,
Adultery and Divorce.

~~~
whalesalad
I can't stand hearing this kind of fud. My parents divorced when I was ten. My
dad was accused of being abusive. He may or may not have been, I'm not sure on
all the details. Regardless, I turned out fine. I had to go to court. I had to
talk to police at random intervals. I could only see my dad a few times a
month for a few hours, or every other weekend. They were strange
circumstances. But this bullshit about stay together for the kids is complete
horseshit. Are you fucking kidding me? I'm livid.

My father has since remarried and is extremely happy with his wife and my two
little half sisters. My other sister and I are doing great. I'm starting a
company in Sweden and my sister is about to finish her bachelors from USC. My
mom is doing great and just adopted a new puppy. Everyone is happy and the
shit show is over.

Alternatively had they stayed together... There would have been MOUNTAINS upon
mountains of resentment inside of our household. Fuuuuuuuck that no thank you.
Kids are tough. They grow up and will be fine if they are loved and supported
by their family members... Regardless of whether or not they were divorced.

This bullshit excuse that divorce damages and gives a kid post traumatic
stress is false. As we all know most marriages in America end in divorce, so I
have a lot of friends with divorced parents. They're all fine. I've never sat
with any of them and pouted or wept over my life.

Correlation does not prove causation.

~~~
eksith
It didn't happen to my family, therefore it doesn't happen right? Thanks for
glossing over the therapy and counselling bit.

FYI the age, gender, temperament, environment, household size, family income,
income disparity between parents, support or lack of support of other adults
in the immediate family, support or lack of support of other children,
association with children comparable age/gender/temperament, association with
children of different age/gender/temperament etc... etc... one of the few
things people miss out when they cite "I'm well adjusted therefore..." as
opposed to the legion of people actually studying the effects of divorce on
children.

Suffice it to say, your experience with divorce wasn't mine or many others'
for that matter. I don't wanna turn this into a flame war, so I'll end it
here.

------
dylangs1030
Disclaimer: I'm not in a position to use this startup, but my parents divorced
when I was young.

I'm going to be that guy. I really don't like this startup, or at least how
it's presented.

I have never seen a startup's front page focus so exhaustively on a founder's
background. After reading about her story I'm not motivated to look elsewhere.

Her story garners a lot of sympathy, but _how does the company work?_ That's
all I care about when I go to a website's page. And it's not immediately
presented. What I'm hit with first is the name, tagline, graphic and founder's
story. I get that she went through divorce. The part about the judge is
particularly riveting. But I, personally, don't feel it is as professional as
it could be. It doesn't need to be cold, but this is trying _very hard_ to be
relatable.

I'm not trying to be cruel, I'm just being honest. I hope I don't offend the
founders.

~~~
davidbalbert
It looks like OP it's just a founder profile. The company's home page[1] is
much closer to what you would expect. I was initially thrown off too, though.

[1]<http://wevorce.com/>

~~~
Jplenbrook
I still think the homepage leaves out a lot of the value. The explainer video
only sets the problem, not the solution.

Problem: Divorce is messy and it's the second most stressful event you and
your Children will ever go through. The average divorce takes a year with many
dragging on for many years,and inculde _________ trips to court with an
average cost of $27,000.

Solution: Our initial trial of 104 families Wevorced in an average of 89 days
with 1 trip to court (That's not per family that out all 104 families) and our
service costs a fraction of what is normally paid in court fees.

We are able to this using our 6 step process _______ instead of the
traditional adversarial __________.

------
minimaxir
So, we have startups that help get people get together, startups that help
people marry, and now startups that help through divorce.

If I were an entrepreneur, I'd cut out the middle man and vertically integrate
all three into one startup.

~~~
codegeek
"integrate all three into one startup."

What would be your tagline ? How about "no hassles marriage to divorce in 1
package." Then could price your service as:

\- Dating only

\- Marriage only

\- Dating & Marriage (value package)

\- Marriage and divorce (value package)

\- Dating,Marriage,Divorce (super value package)

~~~
lmkg
No, man, you've got it all wrong. The real opportunity isn't in marriage-to-
divorce, it's in divorce-to-marriage. "Tired of your marriage? Get a better
one in six months or your money back!"

~~~
trdtaylor
... I.... YC14

------
seeingfurther
This is ridiculously hard problem to solve and the likelihood of Wevorce
succeeding is very low (as in all startups). But man... it's refreshing
whenever I see SV funding large hard to solve problems. It's not all me too
ideas, bloated valuations, social network XYZ with zero business models as the
press might make it seem much of the time.

~~~
evolve2k
Acctually i saw the opposite, a startup drives traction from addressing a pain
point and there is a big easy target here, make the process suck less. I would
say just by cutting out two opposing lawyers this will instantly be more
successful based on just the collaborative start alone.

~~~
tapatio
Wait until Wevorce gets sued by an unhappy husband or wife.

~~~
evolve2k
Possibly, and also another reason to bet on these guys as they are founded by
a lawyer.

------
anateus
Mods, wefunder, whomever: the similarity of your names is making people think
this is the home page of Wevorce rather than an article about the founder and
company. Either make it clear at the top of the article page, or in the title
here.

~~~
gbelote
Thanks for the feedback, anateus (and everyone else). I made a few quick
tweaks to the page that hopefully makes it feel less like their homepage. Let
me know what you think.

We want to be careful about making our branding too strong, because this post
is about Wevorce, not Wefunder. In the future we'll put more design cycles
into separating the Startup of the Week brand from our own, while keeping the
featured startup front-and-center.

------
tapatio
Here's some advice to the founders: as a man I wouldn't use a site where it
shows a graphic of a father being torn away from his wife AND child.

~~~
andrewcooke
unless they've changed it already, it doesn't. <http://wevorce.com/>

~~~
tapatio
I though the original link was to the homepage of wevorce but it wasn't
(<https://wefunder.com/wevorce>).

------
gbelote
Divorce is one of the most stressful events that can happen in your life, as a
kid or as a spouse. It's great to see companies like Wevorce work towards
solving real and important problems.

~~~
mgarfias
Yep. One thing worse: divorce coupled with abuse (physically + sexual), and
the authorities refusing to do anything about it.

------
josephscott
"so she could help make sure other children didn’t have to go through a
similar traumatic experience."

If her goal is to help other children avoid going through this wouldn't the
better problem to tackle be how to lower the number of divorces? Any divorce,
no matter how "smooth" the process is is going to be painful for the kids.

~~~
mgarfias
My boy is now having nightmares going on a year later. And the ex and I came
to an agreement, handled things ourselves and had no lawyers involved. Not to
say it was easy, and there weren't fights, but as far as divorces go it wasn't
messy.

My son appears to be scared that hes going to be taken from me, or his mom.
Not exactly sure, as talking to a 3.5yro just woken from a nightmare isn't
exactly easy or informative and I'm having to read between the lines a bunch.

I need to find the little guy some counseling or something so we can address
his fears and help him work through them.

------
bambax
I don't understand how this is a "startup" in YC/PG's sense of "growth
machine".

From the article, the purpose of wevorce is to offer a new approach to
divorce, where just one lawyer works for the whole family (partners + kids),
instead of the usual arrangement where each partner fights the other to death.

This certainly sounds like a good idea, but isn't it just a kind of counseling
business (the Accenture of divorce)?

Even if they can speed up the paperwork a little, at least one lawyer will
still be needed for every "customer" (couple divorcing), so how does this
scale in a startup sense?

~~~
bambax
Replying to my own question like on Stackoverflow, it could be that what
wevorce does (from a business perspective) is create a new market (a cheap
divorce where there is only 1 lawyer instead of 2, and less paperwork), and
providing this market with a software solution that it builds and maintains.

Wevorce doesn't employ lawyers directly, it just acts as a marketplace between
them and people wanting to get divorced without killing one another, and it
takes a cut in the form of software licence.

So from this point of view there's no reason it couldn't scale indefinitely.

------
te
Would like to read about your company, but something on this site is causing
my browser to jack my CPU, and I'm unable to continue. FF18.0.2 on Ubuntu.

~~~
gus_massa
Also unusable in IE9 because it crash.

------
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.

~~~
j-reynolds
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!

------
dgunn
There are going to be some really good mock testimonials created for this
service. They'll probably look like an eHarmony commercial but they'll say
really funny things about how great their divorce was and how everyone should
try Wevorce for their next divorce.

------
throw_away_acc
I don't know, the idea sounds nice, but I doubt that this a venture case and
will scale and fits into PG's 'Startup = Growth' strategy since it's just a
service which requires tons of manpower (except it pivots into a
marketplace/leadgensite for lawyers offering a defined divorce package but we
had similar models 10yrs ago and they just do not work). The landing page
could be stolen from one of ClickBank's merchants (you know those shady ultra
long landing pages which want to sell useless stuff).

I understand that YC startups are proud to be part of YC and thus, put the YC
label on their site and everywhere else but often (and in particular here)
it's the only USP such startups have.

------
anonymoushn
Hopefully this can help people who don't want to deal with "jagin" to ensure
that their divorces don't "wind up like their parents one did." Don't worry,
"All of our clients our Wevorce clients."

------
andrewcooke
i'm a tad confused. is wefunder related to wevorce? if not, it might be worth
saying so, because the names are so similar.

------
dinkumthinkum
Wow, I was thinking two nights ago about how interesting/funny it would be if
someone pitched a startup to "disrupt" divorce to PG. I hadn't thought at all
what the thing would actually do, just the idea. It sounds like one of those
sitcom ideas to me but I'll look it over. Weird coincidence, though.

------
zapnap
great, but... no one is discussing the moving clouds in the crayon drawn
header graphic.

------
mhartl
This is a cool idea. I'd like to see something like Wevorce on the other side,
i.e., a startup that gives couples more flexibility in creating a marriage
contract that meets their needs. Does anyone know if that already exists?

------
ISL
As someone whose parents divorced amicably, I must opine that this is a great
idea. The difference between my experience and those of others whose parents
fought bitterly is considerable.

Done right, this idea can be a force for good.

------
HeyLaughingBoy
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?

~~~
j-reynolds
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.

------
maurits
I can't help feel that a lot of the problems mentioned could be substantially
mitigated if one had a decent prenuptial agreement.

Other than that, I think this idea will work.

------
thisischris
Majority of that page tells me who the founders are, their business plan, and
their investors, but not a whole lot about what they're going to do to help
me.

------
mnicole
This is petty compared to the purpose of the startup, but the typography/use
of ligatures on the site is fantastic.

~~~
curiousdannii
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.

~~~
bambax
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 subtitles, but the rule
isn't clear to me)

\- ligatures are kind of "classy" (?), and the phrase "suck less" is very
colloquial => the contrast is unpleasant (like seeing someone in a tuxedo,
covered in mud)

Finally, the home page of wefunder is completely different, with basic sans
used for copy (font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;)
and 'ChunkFiveRoman' for titles (?)

In short, the typography seems to be a little all over the place (but that's
just my opinion).

~~~
strevat
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.

------
bira
I would invest in these people in a heartbeat.

YC is lucky to have you onboard.

------
metaphorm
it makes me sad that there's a business model for monetizing divorce. for the
sake of humanity, I hope this company fails.

~~~
saraid216
You realize that it's actually an industry, right?

<https://www.google.com/search?q=divorce+lawyer>

