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A $5 million divorce leaderboard
The numbers were mind-blowing to the founders. Below the top spot there are couples who spent a few hundred thousand dollars, and the company's own CTO spent $300,000 on her divorce.
Divorce touches a million couples every year in the United States, and the true count is higher because not every state reports it. Much of the cost comes from how manual the process is: bank statements get downloaded, lawyers pass them to accountants, and the accountants charge separately for highlighting transactions by hand.
One legal tech CEO going through a divorce told the team about a lawyer on the other side who wrote out the asset division on a napkin during a call, set it aside, and months later asked whether he remembered the napkin, then showed him the whole scheme he had written.
Why does divorce cost so much more in some cases?
Cost rises with the number of contested issues, since each one needs filings, negotiation, and sometimes a hearing. High-value estates add business valuations, tax questions, and expert witnesses. Cases that settle early avoid most of those steps. Court data in many places show that a minority of cases go to trial, but those account for a large share of total spending.
Why do deals get written on napkins?
A napkin is whatever paper is at hand, and people sketch agreements there when talking in a restaurant or on a call. Courts have sometimes treated informal writings as evidence of an agreement, depending on the jurisdiction and the circumstances. One famous example is the 1976 sketch economist Arthur Laffer drew on a napkin to illustrate his tax curve. The format signals that the point is the idea and not the paperwork.
How many US couples divorce each year?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published national divorce counts built from state reports. Some states, including California, have not reported divorce data to the national system, so the totals leave out part of the country. That is why published national figures sit below the true number. The rate per 1,000 people has declined from its peak around 1980.
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