Since its founding in 2018, Hello Divorce has aimed to make the divorce process less stressful and more cost-effective. The startup helps spouses accurately complete often-confusing legal forms and navigate procedures that vary from state to state, and even county to county. Now, anyone who creates a free account can access vetted divorce information—covering laws and procedures—through an AI assistant called Hallie.
Hello Divorce already offers financial calculators to help users understand real estate options and state child support guidelines. It also connects clients with vetted professionals—lawyers, mediators, real estate experts, and even life coaches—when extra guidance is needed. Cofounder and CEO Erin Levine describes the service as a “holistic option that supports you through the entire experience” of divorce and its ripple effects, in ways the legal system doesn’t.
Erin Levine [Photo: Hello Divorce]
“I’ve been a divorce attorney for 20 years now, and the divorce legal system is absolutely broken,” Levine says. “It costs, on average, $20,000 per litigant in legal fees alone; it takes over a year; it fully fails to address things that come with the life transition of divorce.”
Alongside its paid plans—tailored for different needs and usable by one or both spouses—Hello Divorce gives free account holders access to thousands of articles, videos, and other resources. This reflects the reality that people often spend months or years considering divorce before taking legal steps.
Cofounder and president Heather MacKenzie says the goal was to provide a knowledge base that contrasts with other online sources, where lawyers often advertise using scare tactics or sites provide only broad, generic information. While many venture-backed companies rush into AI, MacKenzie explains that Hello Divorce was deliberate in ensuring its system met high standards.
“I did not need a rich blend of all of the mediocre to not great, scary content on the internet, all mixed together and fed to our consumers,” says MacKenzie, a former journalist. “But what we were sitting on top of was thousands and thousands and thousands of researched and vetted articles that we have produced over the years that we constantly update on our own.”
Legal information via AI is becoming more common, with companies like Rocket Lawyer unveiling AI-powered contract review and tax services like TurboTax and H&R Block rolling out AI assistants. Yet some AI tools for legal professionals have already been caught spreading misinformation.
[Photo: Hello Divorce]
To avoid that risk, Hello Divorce partnered with Personal AI, a company specializing in secure, customized models based on trusted data—what it calls personal language models (PLM)—to build Hallie.
“PLM is designed to be highly personal, highly specialized, highly contextual to a specific set of data that is internal to a business or an individual,” says Suman Kanuganti, Personal AI’s cofounder and CEO.
Kanuganti’s team spent months working with Hello Divorce to ensure Hallie could accurately answer questions down to the county level, covering everything from form terminology to community property laws. Today, it can provide answers for users in all 50 states, using the clear, non-legalistic tone Hello Divorce prefers.
Heather MacKenzie [Photo: Hello Divorce]
According to MacKenzie, tests against general-purpose AI tools like ChatGPT show Hallie delivers better, more personalized answers. The system can also be quickly updated as laws change, and the company may eventually roll out an AI copilot to guide paying users more closely through complex cases.
Roughly 6,000 real users have already beta tested Hallie. The founders say it has helped people avoid panic about divorce procedures—sometimes in the middle of the night, when legal professionals aren’t available. In one case, Hallie clarified for a user that their spouse was not seeking sole custody of their children. Others have used it for questions ranging from financial disclosure rules to the complications of divorcing while pregnant.
Still, MacKenzie stresses that Hallie isn’t left to run unchecked—human experts play a central role.
“I actually think that this is an editor job,” she says. “Because you are curating the right content, the right tone, telling your chat interface what to emphasize and what not to.”
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