All's fair in love and war, which may be why divorce often seems unfair. One person usually leaves the union feeling especially burned, either because he or she was blindsided and didn't see the end coming, or because one person got the house and car, and the other got the pet rock and Slim Whitman albums.
Karen Stewart, 47, set out to change that. Four years ago, she created Fairway Divorce Solutions (get it? a "fair way" to solve a divorce) after several years of working on her business plan. She had plenty of inspiration. She divorced her husband around the turn of the century in a bruising, emotional legal battle. By the time it was over, she had spent half a million dollars in legal bills and realized she and her ex-husband, who both live in Calgary, Alberta, and share custody of three children, would never be friends.
"Our kids are thriving, but [the loss of friendship] is sad," says Stewart. "With the affidavits, the court filings -- he was never able to move through that, and that's okay. But it's unnecessary to have that outcome. Kids want their parents to be friendly even if they're divorced."
But this was as unfriendly a divorce as you get. Stewart ended up writing a book about her experiences, Clean Break: How to Divorce with Dignity and Move On with Your Life, and creating Fairway Divorce Solutions. In 2008, two years after opening for business, she began franchising.
The business aims to help both husband and wife divorce amicably -- as in, Fairway works for the couple, not half of the couple. "We're not mediators or lawyers," says Stewart, although some attorneys have bought franchises. "We have a very strategic, step-by-step model to help with resolution on two issues: money and kids."
Stewart says "one of the flaws of the system is that you have two lawyers, so they're always bargaining, then children become part of the bargaining chip. In my opinion, divorce isn't appropriate for that model of giving up the assets to the lawyers. It's appropriate in business, not family."
Customers pay a flat fee and depends on what the couple wants and the complexity of their financial situation. "The way to visualize it," says Stewart, "is as a Starbucks divorce. At the end of the day, everybody gets coffee, but it's going to come out differently depending the way you want it served. We have a very strategic, methodical process, which includes anywhere from 14 to 20 steps to getting a divorce, depending how complicated the situation is."
Stewart is certain that her model is better than the current model: "One of the flaws of the system is, when you're getting a divorce, you pick up the phone and think, 'Who can I hire to show the world that he or she is a horrible person, so I can win?' People think by hiring a top attorney, they're engaging control -- but the opposite happens. You lose control to the system and the mechanism of the system. What people forget when they pick up the phone and call the ball-busting, if you will, female or male lawyer, they forget the economics -- the cost of the legal bills and the loss of opportunity cost. If you're going through a divorce, and you have to divert most of your attention to your divorce, your business is going to suffer. When you look at the economics of divorce, there's a massive cost to our society, and there doesn't need to be."
One of those costs, says Stewart, is that children may wind up with the idea that marriage has to end badly "implanted in their DNA" when a union ends so explosively.
It's a complicated, emotional, delicate business, obviously, and that's why Stewart says owning a franchise isn't for everyone. "This isn't an easy job," says Stewart, who says the ideal candidates to buy into the franchise have a strong background in either business, finance or law.
And just in case it isn't clear, Stewart stresses that she is a big fan of marriage -- just not divorce. "We do have people leave our process because they get back together, and to me, that's a gift. Marriage is a great thing, and if we got better at handling divorce, we might have fewer of them in the future."