A New Service Promises to Make Getting a Divorce Cheap and NBD

Divorce: It’s what’s for August. 

That is, according to science, which says that 'tis the most popular season to consciously uncouple. Look, we’re not here to judge anyone getting divorced, especially since about half of American marriages end up that way, according to the World Population Review. (That’s the sixth-highest divorce rate of any country in the world, in case you were wondering.) What we are here to do is let you in on a secret: Divorce has literally never been easier, whatever your situation. Boo leave you for another babe(s), or the Scarlett Johannsen AI in Her? Did you elope in Vegas for the sake of your personal brand, but change creative direction? Happens, baby. It’s 2021. We’re no longer popping out a dozen kids to pull our wagon to Sacramento for a fruitful prospecting career, or whatever the hell my pioneer ancestors did. Romantic partnerships have a different ebb and flow—and breaking point—than they did in the 1840s. 

Welcome to the future, hun. We have Uber helicopters, at-home STD tests, and remote-controlled sex toys. It’s high time someone made an easy-to-navigate service for the heartbroken/bored/emotionally swindled… which is where a new service called Hello Divorce comes in. 

The Oakland, California-based company was founded in 2018 by family law attorney Erin Levine, who wanted to make “affordable meaningful legal counsel” more accessible to un-couplers in California, Colorado, Texas, and Utah. The landing page is a brain salve of honey and blue-grey, low-key millennial branding, with a starter quiz for figuring out your situation that falls somewhere between Buzzfeed and the Prose haircare test I convinced myself I needed. Here’s how it works: After the quiz, you can take a (free) 15 minutes strategy call with the site’s legal assistants, and pick a divorce plan. Services range from a $99 DIY Divorce Package (which you can also pay in increments) that will hold your hand through the court forms and was designed by a certified family specialist, to a flat-fee, $4,500 Cooperative Divorce Package that provides you with five hours of professional, certified mediation services to expedite agreements on child support, alimony, shared parenting, property and debt division, and more. There’s a whole gamut for you and your future ex-obsession to run, so you can get jazzed about doing it all over again after your next romantic bender in Vegas. 

Now, I’ve been engaged, but never married. That was stressful enough. So I imagine that anyone going through a divorce will appreciate how damn pleasant the site is to navigate. It’s accessible and neutral, without feeling sterile. “What nobody gets when you start a divorce is how to do it,” reviewed one customer. “You don’t know the forms you’ll need, or how the process works. They offer so many tutorials that explain the process and the different forms you need to complete. I clicked around the site to educate myself, but you don’t even have to do that, because [Hello Divorce makes] the entire process so easy.” An easy divorce? Wild. 

Scope out your options on the Hello Divorce website, and see you on the Strip. 

The Rec Room staff independently selected all of the stuff featured in this story.