We’re pretty much addicted to our smartphones in the year 2017. We use them to communicate with friends, post pictures, track our fitness, find recipes, listen to music; we trust them with all of our information.
And now, you can download your very own divorce counsellor – that aims to help you and your partner to “consciously uncouple” – to quote a famous Hollywood actress.
The Amicable app, that was designed by Kate Dale, came about when the founder was going through a divorce of her own.
When she realised quite how expensive the divorce proceedings alone were, she thought there must be a better (and cheaper) way.
The app promises to be the “faster, fairer, fixed price way to separate,” and is thought to be an eighth of the price of using a lawyer.
Gwyneth and Chris in 2014
Amicable combines emotional support with “friendly” legal advice, and is meant to prepare the couple up to the point when they can apply to be legally separated in court.
It’s thought of everything from parenting arrangements to asset division, but all for a fraction of the cost of going through lawyers.
Co-creator Pip Wilson explains: “We created amicable after Kate’s traumatic and expensive divorce. The cost and the emotional damage of involving lawyers was a huge shock.
“The world needed a solution that put families first and helped parents remain on good terms… our solution is amicable.”
In March 2014, Gwyneth Paltrow brought the term ‘Consciously Uncoupling ‘ into the mainstream, after announcing that that was how she and husband Chris Martin were going about divorce.
“It is with hearts full of sadness that we have decided to separate,” the pair wrote on her Goop website. “We have been working hard for well over a year, some of it together, some of it separated, to see what might have been possible between us, and we have come to the conclusion that while we love each other very much we will remain separate.”
“We have always conducted our relationship privately, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and coparent, we will be able to continue in the same manner. Love, Gwyneth & Chris.”
