Divorce is not only a legal process. It is a financial, operational, and structural transition involving decisions about property, finances, parenting, support, insurance, taxes, and the future structure of two households.
Amy Tourte, founder of Alette, built the platform around a simple problem. People are expected to make those decisions while gathering documents, understanding their finances, and determining what still requires professional guidance, often across a collection of spreadsheets, notes, folders, cloud drives, and online research.
Alette is designed to bring that preparation into one structured process before or alongside work with attorneys, mediators, financial professionals, and other advisors.
The Work That Happens Before the First Professional Conversation
People often enter divorce with pieces of the information they will eventually need. They may know approximately what an account contains or have a general idea of how they would like parenting time to work, but professional conversations frequently require much greater specificity.
Preparation can include identifying assets and debts, gathering financial statements and tax records, documenting income and expenses, considering parenting schedules, and surfacing the decisions that still need to be made.
The scope varies significantly from one family to another, which is why Alette does not prescribe a fixed preparation timeline. Someone contemplating separation may begin months before taking any formal step, while another person may be preparing for an upcoming professional meeting or filing.
A Significant Amount of Divorce Is Already Self-Managed
The need for better preparation is particularly relevant because a substantial amount of family-law work is already being handled by individuals themselves.
The Family Justice Initiative's national study of domestic-relations cases in state courts found that 72% of the cases reviewed involved at least one self-represented party. The research was conducted by the National Center for State Courts in partnership with IAALS and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.
That does not mean professional guidance is unnecessary. It means people are already responsible for gathering and organizing a significant amount of information before, between, and sometimes without continuous professional representation.
Alette is built for that preparation layer.
Organizing Decisions, Documents, and Finances Together
Alette surfaces the legal, financial, and parenting decisions a separation or divorce may require, then connects those decisions to the documents and financial information behind them.
The result is a Case File that can move with someone into conversations with the professionals supporting them.
That structure matters because divorce decisions are interconnected. What happens to the marital home can affect the finances of both future households. Parenting schedules can affect work, expenses, housing, and insurance. Financial decisions can affect taxes and support.
Rather than treating each issue as a separate form or task, Alette is structured around the larger system of decisions involved in the transition.
Helping Professional Time Start Further Ahead
Alette's role is preparation, not professional advice.
Alette surfaces and organizes. Professionals advise and finalize.
The goal is to elevate professional conversations so a session with an attorney, mediator, financial professional, or other advisor can go toward advice, analysis, negotiation, and judgment rather than recreating information that has already been gathered elsewhere.
That can be useful whether someone begins preparing independently or uses Alette alongside a professional during intake and discovery.
Preparation Does Not Require the Parties to Be in the Same Place
Alette is private by default. Someone can begin independently, without requiring participation from a spouse or partner. If both parties later participate, they use separate accounts rather than a shared login, with control over what is shared.
That structure reflects an important reality of divorce preparation. The parties do not need to have the same perspective, timeline, or level of readiness in order for each person to begin organizing the information and decisions relevant to the process.
Building the Preparation Infrastructure Underneath Divorce
Tourte founded Alette in February 2026 after her own divorce, mediation training, and fifteen years working in technology across LinkedIn, Dropbox, AWS, and venture-backed startups.
What she saw was a preparation gap beneath the existing professional ecosystem.
Attorneys provide legal advice. Mediators facilitate agreement. Financial professionals analyze financial outcomes. Other specialists contribute expertise within their disciplines. But before and between those conversations, someone still has to assemble the facts, documents, finances, questions, and decisions those professionals need.
That is the work Alette is designed to structure.
Alette does not provide legal, financial, or therapeutic advice, and it is not a substitute for a mediator, attorney, or financial professional. It is a preparation platform intended to help people and the professionals supporting them begin from a more organized and informed starting point.
Alette is currently in closed beta.