February 23, 2000 - Metro West Daily News

February 23, 2000

Internet site attempts to ease pain of divorce

By ANDREA L. STAPE
NEWS BUSINESS WRITER

Divorce may be hard, but two Newton-based entrepreneurs think their Internet site can help ease the pain. Earlier this month, Dan Caine and Wendell Smith launched FamilyLawSoftware.com, a World Wide Web site providing tax software and advice for people thinking of ending their marriages. 

Visitors can use FamilyLawSoftware.com's seven divorce calculators to determine the tax implications of having one spouse or the other take a deduction on the house, or crunch the figures for their potential alimony payments. 

The site also gives users the chance to check out specific divorce laws from nine states, including Massachusetts, and browse a database of more than 1,500 lawyers and mediators. 

It's an idea the duo came up with several years ago, after discovering 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce. Few companies were offering consumers comprehensive tax and financial divorce software, Caine said. 

The site's software programs work like traditional tax planning software. They cost anywhere from $5, for Web access to the divorce calculators, to $79 for a whole suite of downloaded divorce-planning software. 

"The software saves users legal fees, because at the very least, it acquaints them with the process and the issues that are going to come up," said Caine, co-founder and president of FamilyLawSoftware.com Inc. "Because the software does things so that the lawyer doesn't have to, it can reliably save them several hundred dollars in legal time." 

While the tax and financial implications of divorce are complex, Smith and Caine have the business pedigree for success. The team created Kiplinger's successful Tax Cut software, and Smith has degrees from both Harvard University's Graduate School of Business and Harvard Law School. 

Incidentally, Smith and Caine say they are happily married. 

The two now pull in revenue from software sales, but Caine hopes to start selling advertising space on the site to lawyers. Since the site launched Feb. 10, it's had more than 280,000 hits, according to Caine. 

In addition to software, the site offers a bit of the human touch. A section dedicated to the human side of the process gives users advice on how to break the news to children, and what to do if they are still working on keeping the marriage together. 

But despite FamilyLawSoftware.com's attempt at a friendly spin, Caine and local attorneys agree there's just no substitute for a qualified, real-life, divorce professional. 

"When you are doing a divorce agreement, you are looking at a blueprint for the future. You need to look at the family, not just dollars and sense," said Melvin Albert, a Natick divorce attorney.