Every year, thousands of British Columbia families go through separation without ever speaking to a lawyer. Not because they don't want legal clarity — but because they can't afford it.
Family law in BC is complex, emotionally charged, and expensive. A single hour with a family lawyer costs between $300 and $600. A contested file can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. For many families — particularly those who don't qualify for legal aid but can't comfortably absorb a $10,000 legal bill — the system offers no good middle ground.
The result is a well-documented phenomenon that legal scholars call the access to justice gap: a widening divide between those who can afford professional legal guidance and those who cannot.
We built Simply Separation to close that gap, one tool at a time.
The Problem With "Do Your Own Research"
When families can't afford a lawyer, they turn to the internet. And the internet, to put it charitably, is not optimized for their needs.
Legal information in Canada is scattered across government websites, outdated PDFs, and forum threads where anonymous strangers confidently state things that aren't quite right. Understanding the Federal Child Support Guidelines — a federal regulation that runs to dozens of pages of tables and formulas — requires either legal training or hours of painful effort. Even then, most people aren't sure if they've got it right.
This isn't just inconvenient. It's costly. Families that go into negotiations without a clear understanding of their legal position are more likely to agree to terms that don't reflect what the law actually provides. Or they escalate unnecessarily into adversarial proceedings because neither party had access to the same neutral, accurate information.
Good information reduces conflict. That's the insight at the heart of what we're building.
What We're Building — And Why It's Different
Simply Separation is developing a suite of free, professional-grade tools designed to give BC families the same quality of information that a lawyer would provide in an initial consultation — available instantly, at no cost, without an account.
We want to be precise about what that means, and what it doesn't.
Our tools are information tools, not legal advice. They help you understand how the law is likely to apply to your situation. They do not replace a lawyer, and they are not a substitute for independent legal advice before signing any agreement. What they do is give you a foundation — the numbers, the framework, the vocabulary — so that when you do engage a lawyer, you're spending that time productively instead of paying $400/hour for a basic explanation.
That distinction matters to us, both ethically and practically. We are not trying to cut lawyers out of the process. We are trying to make the process more efficient, less intimidating, and more equitable.
The Roadmap
Here is what we are building, in order:
Child Support Calculator
Our first tool is already live. The BC Child Support Calculator implements the Federal Child Support Guidelines, Schedule I — the same tables and formulas that lawyers and courts use to calculate base child support in British Columbia.
It handles both sole custody and shared custody (the section 9 set-off calculation for parents who each have at least 40% of parenting time). It is updated to the current guidelines. And it is completely free, no account required, embeddable on any website.
If you've ever paid a lawyer to run this calculation for you, you know what it's worth.
Spousal Support Calculator
Spousal support is more complicated than child support. Unlike child support, which is formula-based, spousal support involves a significant degree of judicial discretion. But there is a framework: the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines (SSAG), which provide ranges for both the amount and duration of support based on the type of relationship, income, and length of cohabitation.
Our spousal support calculator will implement the SSAG formulas — both the without-child-support and with-child-support formulas — and present results as ranges, as the guidelines intend, with plain-language explanations of the factors that influence where in the range a given situation might land.
This tool is in development.
Property Division Planner
Dividing property in BC is governed by the Family Law Act, which establishes a framework based on the concept of "family property" and "excluded property." The general rule — equal division of family property — is clear enough. The exceptions, adjustments, and calculations are where things get complicated.
Our property division planner will walk families through the key questions: What counts as family property? What is excluded? How is a family home treated when one spouse owned it before the relationship? How are pension entitlements calculated?
The goal is not to replace the legal analysis that a complex property division requires. It is to give families a structured, accurate starting point — a worksheet they can bring to their lawyer rather than starting from scratch.
Separation Agreement Outline
The final piece — and the most ambitious — is a structured separation agreement outline.
We want to be transparent about what this is. It is not a drafted legal agreement, and it is not intended to be signed as-is. What it is: a structured summary of agreed positions across all the key issues in a separation — children, support, property, debt — organized in plain language, ready to be reviewed and formalized by independent legal counsel.
The goal is to reduce the time (and therefore the cost) of the legal drafting process by giving lawyers a clear, organized starting point rather than a set of handwritten notes and unresolved disputes. For families who have reached broad agreement but need professional documentation, this tool could meaningfully reduce legal fees on both sides.
This is where the platform is going. We are building toward it deliberately.
Why Free?
We get asked this. If these tools are genuinely useful, why not charge for them?
The honest answer is that charging for access to legal information feels philosophically inconsistent with the mission. The access to justice gap exists precisely because legal information and legal processes are too expensive. Building a business that monetizes the gap we're trying to close doesn't make sense to us.
Simply Separation has a business model — it involves connecting families who have reached agreement with BC family lawyers who can provide independent legal advice and formal documentation. That service, which involves professional legal work, is appropriately paid. But the tools that help families understand their situation and prepare for those conversations? Those should be free.
We believe that technology can do for legal information what it has done for financial information, medical information, and a dozen other domains that used to require expensive professional gatekeepers for every question. The goal is not to eliminate the role of lawyers — it is to make the questions you need a lawyer for fewer, better defined, and less expensive to answer.
An Invitation
We are in the early stages of this project. The child support calculator is live. The rest of the roadmap is in development.
If you are a BC family navigating separation, we hope these tools are useful to you. If you are a family law professional who sees potential in what we're building, we'd like to hear from you.
Access to justice is not a radical idea. It's just one that the legal system has been slow to catch up with. We think technology can help close that gap — and we're building the tools to prove it.
The tools on this platform provide legal information, not legal advice. They are designed to help you understand how BC family law may apply to your situation. Before signing any agreement, you should obtain independent legal advice from a qualified BC family lawyer.