Divorce, But Smarter: There’s Onward.life for That | Episode 243

Divorce Technology and Onward.life: Simplifying Financial, Legal, and Emotional Challenges

In this episode of Divorce at Altitude, Ryan Kalamaya is joined by Alexa and Jason, the founders of Onward.life, a legal tech platform designed to help individuals navigate the complexities of divorce. From financial disclosures to co-parenting plans and emotional wellness, this conversation explores how technology is streamlining divorce processes and providing holistic support for families.

Guest Information

Alexa experienced the frustrations of divorce firsthand, inspiring her to create Onward.life to support others through financial, legal, and emotional aspects. Jason Weiss co-founded the company, bringing deep experience in technology and product development to ensure the platform is practical, secure, and user-friendly. Together, they provide a holistic solution for those navigating divorce, whether self-represented or working with attorneys.

Episode Highlights

Origin story – How Alexa’s personal divorce experience led to the creation of Onward.life. 

Financial transparency and automation – Using open banking and AI tools to import and organize assets, debts, income, and expenses for accurate disclosure and planning. 

Legal guidance – Helping users prepare for state-specific financial statements and co-parenting plans, with ongoing support throughout the process. 

Emotional wellness – Interactive tools like the Feelings Wheel, journaling, and daily check-ins to address mental health during divorce. 

AI in divorce tech – Supporting tasks in the background without replacing human judgment or legal counsel. 

Community and resources – Access to peer forums, educational content, and therapist-led support groups. 

Why Listen?
Whether you’re navigating divorce personally or professionally, this episode offers insights into how technology can reduce stress, save time, and empower families. Learn how Onward.life integrates legal, financial, and emotional support into a single, accessible platform.

What is Divorce at Altitude? 

Ryan Kalamaya and Amy Goscha provide tips and recommendations on issues related to divorce, separation, and co-parenting in Colorado. Ryan and Amy are the founding partners of an innovative and ambitious law firm, Kalamaya | Goscha, that pushes the boundaries to discover new frontiers in family law, personal injuries, and criminal defense in Colorado. 

To subscribe to Divorce at Altitude, click here and select your favorite podcast player. To subscribe to Kalamaya | Goscha's YouTube channel where many of the episodes will be posted as videos, click here.  If you have additional questions or would like to speak to one of our attorneys, give us a call at 970-429-5784 or email us at info@kalamaya.law.

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DISCLAIMER: THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS ON THIS PODCAST IS FOR ENTERTAINMENT AND INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES AND NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING LEGAL ADVICE. CONTACT AN ATTORNEY IN YOUR STATE OR AREA TO OBTAIN LEGAL ADVICE ON ANY OF THESE ISSUES.

Transcript

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (00:38)
Welcome back to another episode of Divorce at Altitude. This is your co-host, Ryan Calamea. This week, I am joined by two founders of a legal tech software company, Onward.life. I have been meaning to have Alexa and Jason, who are my guests, on for quite a while. As listeners know, I am quite personally tech-interested or tech-forward in our firm. It's very tech.

⁓ oriented, ⁓ and I wanted to have a conversation with, people who are not lawyers, to maybe comment on where they see the industry headed. Cause there is a significant amount of innovation going into the legal industry. ⁓ AI is kind of the new buzzword, in pretty much every daily life, but, often what makes divorce hard is not necessarily the legal case.

Alexa (01:06)
you

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (01:29)
It's everything going into it, the emotions and all of that. We're going to talk to Alexa and Jason about what they've done to help improve that side as well as make the legal component a little bit easier or interpret it. But before I kind of blather on even further, Alexa and Jason, welcome to the show.

Alexa (01:48)
Thank you, Ryan, for having us. Great to see you.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (01:51)
Well, let's first start off with, with, the kind of origin story and, and, what onward, does, and how you came about with this idea. So I'll let one of you, kind of tell that story and chime in, ⁓ as, need be.

Alexa (02:07)
Okay, Ryan, I'll take that one since I'm the divorced one here. I was living overseas and with three children and my now ex-husband. And ⁓ we separated and we're planning our divorce. And while it was amicable, I realized ⁓ kind of what a shit show it really was, emotionally, legally, financially, and then custodially. And when I was going through all my happy events, like getting married,

or having my kids, there were all these tools I could find online. There was a community, there were questions I didn't even know to ask, there was a marketplace. And when I started my divorce process, I was looking for a tool like that for divorce, and I found that there was nothing. Peacemeal, I could find some things out, but I didn't even know whether I needed to hire a lawyer.

If I were to hire a lawyer, which questions should I ask a lawyer to interview the right one that's going to be a good fit for me? And that's when this idea came about, which is, wow, there's nothing like this out there that will help me with resources, with a community, and with all of the verticals that kind of the holistic approach to divorce. that is the origin story. It is a personal experience I had that

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (03:23)
Well, and oftentimes you hear founders of companies talking about a problem that they, experienced and then they just felt like they, they had this itch that they needed to scratch in terms of like figuring out the solution and they are looking for other people that do it. But then they kind of come back to, well, if no one else is going to fix this problem, it should be me. So Jason, how did you come into the fold?

Jason Weiss (03:46)
Well, Lexa and I have known each other for a long time, a few decades, let's say we worked our first ⁓ jobs out of college at the same technology company in Austin, Texas. And so I've known each other forever and have always been really complimentary working styles and good friends. And so she went through this process. She just mentioned this, this divorce and was thinking this is a. Just a mess. So super onerous and archaic and there didn't seem to be any tools. And I have spent my.

career building companies from the ground up. So she called me up and said, I really want to solve this. I don't have any personal experience with divorce and frankly didn't think, you know, always think twice about starting a new company. But after spending a couple of months with Alexa and talking with a ton of people who had recently been through the process or in the middle of it. And then also people like yourself, Ryan, lawyers, mediators, judges, financial advisors, therapists, there was universal agreement that

It's a very complicated process that needs help. There needs to be better solution for. And so we just kind of jumped in with both feet, bootstrapped the company and then have built up the company and the product from.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (04:51)
And can you guys maybe comment about what the early version of Onward look like? What was the first thing you guys started? it, let's have a website and can you maybe talk about the evolution of the product of what ⁓ Onward actually looks like maybe from kind of the early conception to where it is now?

Alexa (05:13)
I'll let Jason answer this, but I'm going to lob an intro, which is, you know, I approached this at the very beginning as I want this to be all things divorce. When you're getting divorced, you think of Onward and we will take care of and hold your hand throughout the entire process, working with lawyers or if you're representing yourself. Jason and I made a great team because I'm like, let's have

hundred features right off the bat and Jason's like, Alexa, know, slow down just a second. First, we need to prove some models out. First, we need to build an MVP. So I'll let you take it from there, Jason. But it's been a fun evolution of this kind of push pull of like, I want to do it all. And Jason's like, we're building a business. This needs to happen a certain way.

Jason Weiss (05:58)
Yeah, right. It is difficult. know, the beginning wasn't easy in that in doing these deep surveys of hundreds of people literally who, you who just went through the process or were going through it, as I mentioned, they all said, and, know, they all said basically, I need help with everything. You know, and when you're building a business, divorce is not easy. It's got many different facets to it and everybody's is different. So building a product that

initially could solve every piece of everything for every person was a daunting task. And what we found early on was there are a couple areas that were really not addressed by other solutions out there, solutions being working with representatives or even technology solutions. And one was on the financial side, there's really not a good set of tools and understanding from literally financial literacy. People going through divorce sometimes just don't have any sense of it.

all the way through getting your, we call it getting your ducks in a row for all your assets and debts and income and expenses and getting really that sometimes called the disclosure piece, but really getting a full financial picture of, what is it that we're gonna be dividing up in this process? That hadn't really been addressed. And so we went deep there. And also, as we mentioned a couple of times on the emotional self-care wellness side, a lot of the approaches people have taken, it's more like a, how do I just like...

fill out my legal forms and get through this. And there's really no understanding or appreciation for the emotional toll this takes on people and the paralyzation that happens to lot of people who are going through it can't get, you you've, sure I think you've even mentioned people that just can't get off the couch, let alone deliver all the information they need to, to get you started so that you, Ryan or a couple can do the job of figuring out how to divide it up. we...

We started trying to do everything and did a lot of the legal, helping people fill out their forms if they're rough self-representing and custodial with children, but really focused deep on the financial, which is a big, big lift for a lot of people, and then keeping in mind the emotional. Those are really the areas where we started and then expanded out from there to help people through the legal, more of the legal process and the custodial pieces in terms of deciding on co-parenting plans and so forth.

Alexa (08:11)
And we are running out of

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (08:11)
Yeah. And I think for, ⁓

you know, full, full disclosure, have been an advisor to, or am an advisor to, onward. But I think that for listeners that have heard me talk about our hypothetical divorce client, Eric and Melanie Wolf, I think it's helpful for people to, understand what you guys are doing. And we'll kind of walk, the listener through the.

the product and everything, but really for, you know, other people that have heard me talk, it is crazy to me that with technology that we are going through this whole process of financial disclosures in such an archaic manner. have Eric and Melanie Wolf. They go through divorce, whether it's Eric or Melanie Eric in particular, usually,

will say, is this really like how you like this works? Like this is we provide, like we download statements and we do this and do that. And I will tell Eric, my firm is super tech oriented. So I am at kind of the cutting edge and you think that this is archaic. How about the attorneys that I see or the other people that I see that are filling out their forms?

in with word or like by handwriting and it's not intuitive. And there is such, I've talked to judges, other lawyers about this whole disclosure component. the end result, why we do it makes total sense. Eric and Melanie Wolf, you, you talked about financial literacy, the general, you know, the problem of divorce is that Melanie may not have ever really handled the finances.

And so we want to have full transparency and disclosure. And we'll talk about what, uh, the resources that onward has in terms of bringing Melanie up to speed in terms of the financial literacy, also the emotional support component. But really where you guys got me is this financial component that you were talking about Jason. Um, so can you walk us through Eric is going through, uh, Eric Wolf's going through a divorce.

So what is the first 30 days of Eric when he does onward? Like what does that look like? How does he join? And then what is, what does that look like in specifically like the financial component that you, kind of touched on? think concrete examples for Eric Wolf would be helpful for listeners. that might be just driving or walking the dog or wherever they're listening to this. you know, so that they can kind of visualize what that looks like.

Jason Weiss (10:37)
Yeah.

Yeah, great question. Alexa, you jump in here too, but I'll kick this off.

Alexa (10:50)
So yeah, I'll

say one thing about how Eric Wolf used to do it. And we've talked to plenty of people who have told us these stories. When they're getting their finances, all their ducks in a row there, they'll go to their bank online. Month by month, they're going to download August PDF, September PDF for two or three years. They're going to print those PDFs out, and then they're going to carry them to their paralegal or to their lawyer oftentimes. And it will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars often.

and three to six months often. that's the old version that I think a lot of the people that are listening to this that have been through divorce understand, like, yeah, that happened to me. And Jason can explain kind of the first 30 days and how we've been able to change that process.

Jason Weiss (11:34)
Yeah, ultimately, Ryan, the part you're talking about is, you know, getting this full financial picture to understand all of your assets, your property and your debts and how that's going to get divided up. And then the income and expenses of both parties to figure out, you know, moving forward, what is the situation look like in terms of support payments and you know, alimony effectively and child support. And that process of getting all that together is extremely onerous.

But so in the first 30 days, know, we actually start even before and it depends on where your scenario is with Eric, but you know, we cover from people contemplating divorce, which can be years ahead of actually pulling the trigger on something like this, all the way through the post divorce process. And what we've done, you know, with people who are contemplating or in the stage where they say decided they wanted to get divorced, but maybe haven't told their spouse yet. And again, I don't know that Eric and Melanie situation all that clear, but we've provide, you know, tools even

early on before the divorce has been started to say ⁓ like simulation, like we have a new relatively new tool that allows you to spend 10 minutes and input some information about your assets and your debts and your income and expenses. And we will show you simulations or, you know, scenarios, essentially how this could play out in your state about how the information we have from you could lay out a divorce process. And that makes people a lot more comfortable.

or uncomfortable with the idea of going through the process to say, okay, here's how my life might look afterwards. Here's what my budget might look like. Here's how much payment I'm making or receiving. Here's the kind of assets that I walk away with. So that's an early tool that we provide that's free of charge to help people get a sense of, this the right thing for me? With Eric, I imagine the situation of the first 30 days is when someone decides they're gonna go through this and enlists onward to help guide them through it, we go through a fairly...

deep onboarding process to understand both clinically and qualitatively what their scenario is. And that allows us to highly personalize a plan to get them through the process. And on the financial side, just to focus on that, that means understanding what the profile looks like of their assets and debts and income and expenses, and then using technology to avoid the steps that Alexa was talking about. So instead of going to your brokerage firms and your banks and your credit cards and your...

debt holders and everybody and getting all these documents together so that you can categorize and itemize and identify and summarize and average all this information. We use a number of tools, platforms that are called open banking, essentially allow us to log in, you to log into your services, your banks, your credit cards, your brokerage firms. And we then import all the information and can process it for you automatically to give you a really good first start on what your assets, debts, income and expenses all look like.

We also, for people who can't connect or don't feel comfortable with these secure platforms, you can just upload statements to us, PDFs or even pictures, and we can use technology to pull out the information you need and format it in a way that then you can give to your lawyer in a spreadsheet or in other formats that you can provide to your representatives and then they can use that as a guideline to.

to get you through the difficult process. As Ryan, you mentioned, these forms can be quite complicated to go through the process of disclosure and then the next steps, is, as you know, discovery and settlement and so forth. But that first process of getting everything together is really the piece that can take an inordinate amount of time, a lot of money and create a lot of stress. And so we use these tools as technology to import a lot of it to...

whether it's directly from your accounts or through uploads of statements, class file that documentation, the supporting documentation that needs to go along with it, and then deliver that to your representation or at least deliver it to your spouse, because that's the next step of the process is exchanging all this information with your spouse. So we use AI on the backend, open banking workflow and other tools to help you to do that without, you know, in much less time. Something that takes months can take minutes or days at the extreme.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (15:30)
Well, I want to make sure we hit on the emotional component and I'll come back to that. But I think for listeners, Eric Wolf comes to me, I will say, Eric, here's the process of divorce. have to do what's called a swarm financial statement and provide backup documentation, the credit cards and the bank statements. And if you, if Eric goes to onward, he can plug in his username and password to Wells Fargo, to JP Morgan chase, to, know, whatever.

And then, there's a kind of an import that occurs in, because one of the frequent complaints that I get from, Eric Wolf is, well, how do I know how much I spend on groceries and on vacations, and other things, cause that is what is in the sworn financial, statement. so onward will then, import, the date, the data and say you spend on average.

six over the last six months, you've spent $20 a month on haircuts. For example, is that a good kind of example? Is that a fair statement of what kind of one feature it's not the only feature, but that's just an example in terms of that disclosure process.

Jason Weiss (16:32)
That's exactly right.

Yeah, it's

Alexa (16:39)
Other than that,

they're really cheap haircut, by the way.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (16:43)
indeed.

⁓ but you know, for Jason, that might be, and listeners can't hear, but, Jason is bald. So he, yes. So he, he, ⁓ w that would be probably maybe a little bit more expensive on, his side, but in any event, you know, the other component is how Jason maybe walk, me through, talk to me about the, ⁓

Jason Weiss (16:47)
too much.

I do my own hair, yeah.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (17:05)
You know, assets side that, so the brokerage statement or the importation of the 401k balance, that makes sense where it's going to help you understand. And, ultimately is, is, onward, in the business of creating those state specific forms. Most States have, you know, California has a financial disclosure form. Colorado has a sworn financial statement is onward in the process or.

⁓ it can actually produce that, that, that legal form.

Jason Weiss (17:36)
Not so not yet. That's something that's on our roadmap and something we plan to do right now. We have a couple of different versions. We export a generic statement of net worth. It's called it has all your assets and debts and income and expenses and a really nicely formatted spreadsheet. We also have a marital or community balance sheet that so we see your assets and debts so you can start to figure out how to divide it up. And then what we're working on right now is having a version of those spreadsheets by states. You say, then California.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (18:04)
Stay.

Jason Weiss (18:04)
the way you categorize your expenses on this form is different than Colorado, right? They don't wanna see groceries and restaurants mixed up. They want them separately, right? And another state might want them together. So we guide you through that process. Ultimately, we'd like to fill out the forms. Some lawyers have told us they wanna do that themselves, not to make money, but because they have a very specific way of doing it. And the states are very picky about the way those forms are filled out.

But for now, we just, give guidance on by state by state and give you the totals that you need.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (18:32)
Right. But it saves Eric Wolf, the, you know, hours of him kind of, ⁓ trying to go through and estimating. mean, American express, I'll talk to Eric about, know, American express can be helpful at the end of the month or at the end of the year rather, cause it will give you those, summaries, but it's not perfect. And there's kind of different sorting features with, onward and the data that you import. you could kind of expand that data.

Jason Weiss (18:49)
here,

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (19:00)
for two years versus what's happened over the last six months. And there can be some differences as to why you may or may not want to do that. But Alexa talk to me about, and the listener is about the emotional component because I think you you've gone through it. So, you know, going through your divorce, are you feeling every day like you want to just wake up and start crushing, crunching some, numbers. There's going to be some days that you're not feeling so hot. So

I know that Onward addresses that. So what are the emotional, the mental health components of Onward and a user, let's say Melanie Wolf goes in and she's feeling really down and she's not feeling like she really wants to talk or think about money. What are the kind of features of Onward that address that scenario?

Alexa (19:45)
Yeah, so from my personal experience, I'll say that you never know what you're going to get when you wake up in the morning. Sometimes you're optimistic, sometimes you're really down. And so we took that understanding of how emotionally complex a process like this can be. And we built the product to incorporate both very much both the wellness and the emotional component with the operational load. The operational load that you're having to deal with maybe

one day and maybe you can skip the next day, it requires a ton of empathy and it requires community. So we have incorporated compassion into all of our operational tasks. When one of our members logs into their dashboard every day, the first thing that comes up is what's called the feelings wheel. And the feelings wheel is a tool that is interactive that lets you prescribe words to how you're feeling.

This is scientifically proven to help you emotionally. We allow people to journal and we use the feelings wheel not only for our members to be able to express themselves, which helps them, but also in how we might task someone that day. If you're feeling frustrated, pissed off, angry, depressed, we're not going to say, hey, today's the day where you're going to go start filling out your sworn financial statement. When we onboard our members, we ask them

what brings them joy or what has historically brought them joy. Who's your support network? List your friends whom you can count on. And so if they're expressing that they're not feeling great that day, again, we'll task them with, why don't you take a walk on the beach? Why don't you call Jessica and make a dinner reservation? Plan a family meal. So we really try to incorporate this kind of emotional and wellbeing piece into.

the whole entire process. It's a holistic process. Divorce is not just about a legal event. It's also about everything else you're doing. You're raising your kids. You're having to work your job. You're having to cook and clean. And so it's really important to understand someone's emotional, how they're feeling emotionally, and then offer support. Both we can do that and then reminding them that they have a community out there.

whether that's the onward community or whether it's the community they already have in their neighborhood.

Jason Weiss (21:58)
And Ryan, you know this.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (21:58)
I think that that's really

important for, uh, you know, listeners who either they're going through divorce or they work like me in, in the industry, because it is, it's just, it is magnified. think at least my observation where, uh, people go through these tremendous, uh, not mood swings, but, uh, it's a grieving process and every day is, is going to be different. It's one of the things I love about my.

uh, position is I get to help people think about what are the new opportunities that they, uh, have with a transition in their life. But I think that what Onward offers is a very structured, um, holistic approach on the mental health component. Um, whether it be the journaling and there's going to be some days that people are going to wake up and they, um, they can't really deal with.

⁓ what the kind of downloading bank statements and so, and I think that there's a time and place and Onward is very strategic when it comes to ⁓ task management. Alexa or Jason, you maybe talk a little bit about kind of some of the resources? Are there videos? Is it just like a forum? What are the kind of resources on like parenting in terms of a parenting schedule? What does that look like in terms of Onward?

Alexa (23:24)
Want take this,

Jason Weiss (23:26)
Sure,

we have, we've approached this from a variety of ways, Ryan. We have everything on the community side, like parallel to financial literacy, parent, co-parenting literacy. So we have obviously some articles and some guides, also some videos that help you to understand these concepts.

We also have an open forum for our community members and we do weekly support groups. that all kind of is different ways, different people like to engage in different ways. On the tool side, the same way we built a simulator to see what your finances might look like after divorce, we've also done a lot of work to understand your situation. So how many children do you have, for example, how old are they, how far apart are you going to, or do you live from your separated or ex-spouse?

⁓ you know, what sort of activities do the kids engage in? And then from there, getting into the, here's the different parenting plans that might fit you best. And then helping you to look at the schedule and not just the schedule, weekly schedule during school and summer and also, you know, vacations, but also thinking about activities and what, you know, what is the right timing to do exchanges and also advising parents on, you know, once you're in the sort of steady state of going.

As you said, AI and technology has been so great now. It's not just about, you know, managing a schedule. It's about a tool identifying, you're traveling this next week, but you're supposed to have the kids. So here's maybe a way you could suggest an exchange of parenting over the next month, maybe even craft an email. you've got the kids next weekend and you know, here's some ideas on how you could spend time. Here's things going on in your, in your area or here's new movies coming out that we know your kids would like. So there's just a lot more like we call it a co-parenting companion.

even from the beginning to help you simulate what might my situation look like, which we've heard from a lot of people. I just don't know what my life's going to look like afterwards. And then once you're in it, the same tools can now help you with the operational day-to-day of it. So it ranges from, you know, literacy or education and guidance and community support through tools that can help you determine what's best for you and more importantly for the kids. And then also moving forward, how to manage that with some grace and some intelligence.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (25:32)
Yeah. And I think that Onward is so helpful in being that one stop resource where people can go and they can talk about money or research about money, but then also the emotional aspects that we talked about, but the kid components of what is developmentally appropriate. I mean, for me, they come to me and they'll say, well, I have a nine year old and then a 12 year old and

⁓ I'll say, okay. I that those are the ages of my kids. And so let's w let's talk about kind of development, development, developmentally appropriate parenting schedules. And are they doing soccer? Are you guys doing travel soccer and having at least some background to that, at least if they, even if they're working with a lawyer, they can have much more intelligent, thoughtful conversations about, Hey, I know that this is.

a thing, at least I've done some research on this. Can you tell me maybe more about how this would fit with my situation? And I think that having that background, that, that resource is allow allows people to work with a lawyer or do it on their own in such a more efficient, thoughtful, manner. because there's, know, there's not as listeners have.

picked up Eric and Melanie wolf that there are the vast majority of people going through divorce Do not have lawyers and they cannot afford a firm like mine where they just it's just not the the right circumstance so honored I think really fits and addresses so many people that can't be helped by lawyers or You know that that's just not the best fit for them

Jason Weiss (27:04)
I just need to smoke.

Alexa (27:06)
Yes, 72.

That's right, Ryan. It's actually the national average we were shocked to find is 72 % of people self-represent.

Jason Weiss (27:24)
And you're right, Ryan, a lot of this is also, even for the 30 % of people who do engage with representatives, whether they're lawyers or mediators or both, the expectation setting that you're talking about of people, in fact, most legal counsel has been, were the first people to say to us, if you could get my clients before I meet them to come in with better set expectations about what they're gonna end up with in a divorce from an asset and debt side, and what kind of payments they might be able to get.

And also understanding what their life's gonna look like if they have kids before they come to you. Then, you know, the lawyers we talked to you said is like, I don't have to spend this protracted long fighting for stuff that I know, because I've done hundreds of cases they're not gonna get, but they don't, you know, they still want to fight it. If they have better expectations, then, you know, every case is different. And certainly there are really complex cases where a lawyer can be very, very helpful financially and or custodially. So, you know, it's not

in lieu of using someone, it's just to help you get your head around this very difficult process. One of the things that Alexa said to me early on, and I'm maybe stealing some of her words, but the best advice she got when she would tell people she's going through a divorce is you have to accept that you're gonna lose a limb. You're not gonna lose both your legs. You're not gonna die, but you are gonna come out of this with less than what you had, and it's gonna be very painful. And, Alexa, you can probably put better words to this, but

that having people understand that before they go into it is like, is, you I'm not gonna be a hole afterwards, is like a big thing that if people have their head around that, the process can go smoother. It's never gonna be smooth, but it's, you know, it can go a lot smoother.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (29:02)
Yeah, well, let's kind of switch gears a little bit in the sense of where we think this ship is heading. You had mentioned a little bit about the role of a lawyer. I wanted to talk about where you guys see and just having a conversation about where divorce technology and the profession are headed. So let's first start off AI.

Alexa (29:10)
them.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (29:26)
So it is in the news. I have talked a lot about it. You mentioned it a couple of times, Jason, where does AI fit in with onward and where do you see it to the extent that it's different in the overall divorce family law ecosystem?

Jason Weiss (29:44)
Sure, I'll start here and Alex, you can jump in too. AI, know, it's no exaggeration that AI is gonna have a huge impact on all of our lives. And it's every week for those of you, you know, keeping abreast of what's going on, it's mind blowing. And it holds incredible value and promise as an educational tool and guide, but we, and we use it. mean, Onward uses AI in the background. We're not trying to AI your divorce. And in fact, we've talked to

innumerable people who just said, know, like they've, they've tried and they go in and they start with Claude or open AI, you know, chat, GPT or what have you. And it's, it's, though they're great tools, is not, is over, as overwhelming as everything else. One of the ways people say they get overwhelmed is they get their first form, you know, to, file for divorce. And it's usually like seven to 10 pages and people just freak out. And so the same thing when you're working with a chatbot, you know, you're asking, how do I get divorced? And it's just, it's trying to be comprehensive.

and you get overwhelmed very easily. And that back and forth isn't the best interaction model for somebody who is prone to being overwhelmed and scared about not really knowing what questions to ask. So we've built a tool that puts AI in the background, is managing the complexity and the dependencies and the deadlines and giving you suggestions about, given your mood and how much time you have and what you did yesterday, like it's a nonlinear process as you know. maybe here's a few things you could do today, right? And some of them might even be.

self-care or wellness or financial or legal or custodial. So we put AI in the background. So the interaction model we don't believe today and for foreseeable future with AI is not the best way to get through your divorce. All these myriad of processes there. The second is with AI, there's a, way, you know, people uploading your financial forms, your taxes, your credit card statements is over up into AI.

Alexa (31:08)
I fucking hate you.

Jason Weiss (31:30)
The general AI rule is that they'll keep things private, but there's also this issue of they're allowed to use that information for training and so forth. on the healthcare side, there's big HIPAA issues with this and same with on the financial side. You don't want to necessarily be uploading that into the general corpus of training materials that can be used by these companies. we have built and continue to build a secure walled garden where your information is kept separate from everyone else's.

Of course, we use the intelligence we built into the systems over time, but we are keeping your information safe and secure and ⁓ segmented off from everything else we have.

Alexa (32:09)
I might just add, Ryan, and you know this much better than we do, but I think family law attorneys will likely always be helpful with high conflict situations or very complex financial negotiations and settlements.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (32:23)
I agree. I don't worry about AI or onward, you know, doing what I in particular do. I've there will always be people that will argue over, unfortunately, kids or really complex. I don't see AI going through, you know, some really complex business valuations or

having a conversation like I did this morning with a client about parental relocation and really walking them through that issue in the same manner. So yes, I totally agree with you, Alex. I can give you a little bit more feedback in response to Jason. yeah, you know, Onward, I think that it is phenomenal what Onward is doing and AI.

there is an element of AI, we've talked about it internally is that, yeah, like can you conceptualize Eric and Melanie Wolf putting in their usernames and passwords and having it spit out under a Monte Carlo like simulated a million different scenarios. Melanie in a divorce should get the forks, Eric should get the knives, she should get the house and Eric should keep 66 point.

4 % of the brokerage account. Could it come up with that? Absolutely. Are people going to willingly always use that? They're always going to have, unfortunately, arguments ⁓ about that. And I don't think AI will be 100 % accurate. There's going to be those scenarios that it screws up. I guess there's a couple of things that come to mind when I hear, you when I heard you talk.

Alexa (33:37)
Thank

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (34:02)
Jason, that I haven't already covered on previous episodes. The first is that we just came out with, or it was in the most recent Caller Our Lawyer, but there's actually some law on what disclosure obligations are there for Eric and Melanie Wolf when they go to ChatGBT, when they go to Claude, and they start plugging stuff in. Because if Melanie is searching on ChatGBT or doing legal research,

the law now that's being kind of developed is that Eric can actually ask for that information that she her search history or her chat history. The other thing which I think a lot of people need to be really concerned. It's a little bit different when my friend we've we've kind of really leaned in heavily with Claude recently I've tested out you know various models and it's been tremendous for us thus far but

Jason Weiss (34:32)
I think he wants to.

Because she's made it public, right?

We're going.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (34:52)
It's a little bit different when I'm using it compared to like Eric and Melanie Wolf. and I think, you know, one thing people need to consider is like onward is, is like, if they're writing stuff for forums and is that confidential or people, it may be confidential in the sense of that. It's not going to go to the general AI model, but are they going to have to disclose that? you know, those are issues that people are going to have to wait through. The other component is that in particular, like chat, GPT.

It tells you what you want to hear. it's, will say, you know, you'll say, want a hundred percent of, of, of parenting time with Johnny and Sally. And it be like, you're a wonderful parent. Like at least the model, like where of course you should, you deserve a hundred percent. They tells you what you want to hear. the other component within the legal industry are these, hallucinations where, ⁓ you know, and I, I describe it as, you know, when Jack, my son, when he was learning how to swim the.

Alexa (35:21)
Ha

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (35:47)
The swim instructor said, you know, he, he's a confident drowner, where he like really thought he could swim. And like, it was like, he had no idea what he was doing, but he, he, he would just jump right in and AI is very similar where it will give you case names that will tell you, you are this, and look at this and that will give citations and they're just completely made up. because that's how it's trained to give you.

uh, answers and very confident answers. Um, and then lawyers have gotten pinged at all over the place. Um, and it's been, it's become this real, uh, issue with an AI. So I think that that's where it's something that lawyers, when we talk about AI, that's, what people, uh, you know, refer to. I was having a conversation with another lawyer who had tried out AI, I think probably a year ago.

And because like you, Jason, I was like, this is a, this is a total game changer. This is like really going to impact the legal industry for like the, the benefit of the consumer and the client. think it's a wonderful, innovation, for, for divorce. And, he was like, well, it gave me this awful contract and I, and he's just kind of written it off. And I'm like, the world is passing you by. Like it is, it is a tool that I think.

⁓ would be borderline malpractice not to, at least consult or leverage AI, there's some major ethical concerns. That's beyond the kind of scope of this conversation, but I love that onward is, is aware of it, but not fully reliant where it's not just a straight up, just AI company.

Alexa (37:27)
Yep.

Jason Weiss (37:27)
Yeah, we use it as a tool. It's tremendously helpful, especially in the personalization and the ongoing dynamic, you know, determination of what, how to help somebody through it. But it is not the sole solution here. This is not, you can't just build a wrapper around it and have it handle divorce for many of the reasons I mentioned. And there's also the community piece, Ryan, we talked about before of people really want to talk to other people who've been through this process and the AI, though it can be comforting and empathetic, as you said, telling you what you want to hear.

Alexa (37:43)
you

Jason Weiss (37:56)
really talking to somebody who's actually been through it and can understand the pain of losing that limb is really something that up until now and for the foreseeable future, AI is not gonna be able to provide that.

Alexa (38:08)
Go.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (38:09)
Yeah, I agree. And I think people will always want to have another human being, like they, will be an element of having a lawyer or human being marshal them through that process and be there to answer questions similar to someone that has gone through it on a different, like an Alexa type or, or Amy, my partner, um, her, you know, her experience I think is really valuable for those, uh, people. Um,

you know, kind of to wrap things up guys, what, you know, and it doesn't have to be AI, but what's one thing that you would want every family law attorney listening to do differently on, on, Monday morning? what, what is, what does it change or an ask, for at least the family law attorney that may be listening, out there, any ideas coming to mind, Alexa?

Jason Weiss (38:52)
Thank you.

Alexa (38:59)
Yeah, I would say of course recommend onward before the sworn financial statement gets filled out and then also post divorce. We've heard from a lot of attorneys are like once my clients are divorced, they have to do a hundred different tasks from changing their name to the title of their car and we don't want to have to micro bill them for that. That is, know, we have more significant problems to solve here.

You know, the legal process ends long before the logistical burden does. And at the end of a divorce, I think a lot of people think this is it, now I'm done. And so thinking about how to help your clients post-divorce would be one of those things. And then I would say, you know, think about what you can do to help change the system. How can we and how can...

the attorneys listening, bring innovation into the courts to help everyone that's going through a process like this.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (39:59)
Jason.

Jason Weiss (40:00)
Yeah, I would say, mean, I would agree with a lot of what you're saying, Ryan, is start determining how to use technology better in your practice. It's coming, whether you like it or not. And it is tremendously helpful. You know, you use the term it's borderline malpractice if they're not employing technology, but there is really an opportunity to, to streamline and make the whole process more efficient for you and maybe more importantly for your clients. And then as Alexis said, you know, what onward

What we aspire to do is help make the current, help make people more efficient in the current system. But then our ultimate goal is to work with people who are inside the belly of the beast, you know, who are, whether those be lawyers or mediators or judges or court facilitators, just try to figure out how do we make this process? It's never going to be simple. It's always, as you said, right, emotional. You're taking two lives or more and really changing them in a way that nobody anticipated. But, and that's always going to be complicated, but the,

The steps to get it done and make sure it was done equitably for everyone, it seems like way too much right now. I think there's been a lot of bloat in the way the systems work in every state we've worked with. And so that is something that a lot of people are, know, there's the lawyers are so tied up in their actual cases. It's really hard to see the forest through the trees, but we feel like there's an opportunity for, you know, everybody we've talked to thinks the system needs reform. so having the

attorneys, as you said, start thinking about what could I do or what would be suggestions or ideas that I could try to push forward to make the system better for everyone involved would be great. Because I think not to expound on it too much, but people think the tax system is complicated because there's tax companies that like they benefit from being burdensome, right? That you're going to pay it. But we don't feel like family law attorneys aren't like trying to make the system more complicated to get divorced.

Right? And so they want to see this system be easier. You could help more people. so the idea of, but there's, hard, it's really hard to change that legislation and the judiciary in general, but thinking about that as an ongoing idea as a big picture would be really great.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (42:10)
For listeners, they want to learn more about Onward. Where do they find it? Can you maybe give us an idea of, do they create a username and password, like an account? Is it free? Can you give us a little bit more info on where one can find more info and what that looks like?

Alexa (42:28)
Yeah, our website is onward.life, not .com.life. And we offer right when you come to the home page what we internally call the warm hug, which is a quick questionnaire to start understanding your situation. And then you will sign up, create an account, and then you'll be onboarded legally, financially, and definitely on the wellness side. And then we create a customized plan.

for your divorce process. And you don't have to be ready to get divorced yet. You can also just be thinking about it or be curious about how to prepare for it. So we really want to hold people and hold their hand throughout the entire contemplation to post-divorce, if it comes to that.

Jason Weiss (43:10)
And we have a customer care team. So it's not just a technology solution. There's humans involved. So if you need to speak to somebody, we have a therapist on board the team who does these weekly support groups. we also offer consults to new users with one of our therapists for 15 minutes to kind of get a sense about what we can offer and also understand their case a little bit more. And we, as we've said before, preparing for divorce all the way through the post-divorce process we can be of help. We have free tiers for all those. And then you can also,

We have more sort of premium features and modules that you might need if your situation is more complex or you just need more help, but you can get onboarded for free today.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (43:49)
So they can sign up for free. then if they like what they see and they want to get the advanced features and premium features, those are the sorts of things to pay for on an as-needed basis.

Jason Weiss (44:00)
That's

That's right.

Alexa (44:02)
Yes, and we work with self-represented individuals and with ⁓ those that are represented with attorneys or mediators.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (44:09)
And listeners here, mostly are going be in Colorado, but, you guys first started out with kind of an emphasis on, Colorado, but some of the info is, is kind of nationwide, but there is some Colorado specific, information, right?

Alexa (44:23)
Legally, we're most advanced in Colorado. But yes, the financial custodial wellness is nationwide, for sure.

Ryan Andrew Kalamaya (44:31)
Well guys, thank you again for joining me ⁓ and talking about onward.life. And I hope people find this episode to be helpful. hope that they find onward to be helpful. I've referred friends and clients to you guys. And I think that there is some real value to help those 70 plus percent of people.

as well as the 30 % that have lawyers. So 100 % coverage is pretty good. It's not, of course, going to be the best fit for every 100 % of the people out there, but I think it's going to really help and has already helped out a lot of people. So thank you guys for the service and time that you guys have put into this, enjoy the conversation.

Alexa (45:17)
Thanks, Ryan, for having us.

Jason Weiss (45:19)
Yeah, really appreciate it. Good to talk to you.