In midlife the changes are BIG. The rate of those divorcing over the age of 50 is at an all time high. Increasingly too, the ‘relationships’ we have with AI are becoming deeper and wider in application and in frequency.
When it comes to Grey Divorce, AI’s role is also deepening, some may say becoming a dependence. As much as those conversations about your divorce, your relationship, your marriage you may be having with Claude, Chat GPT (name your preferred AI) seem helpful, they do come with certain risks you may not be aware of.
That’s the focus of this podcast chat. Not to scare, to inform. For awareness.
I sat down with Kiki Hart (aka Louise Cooper). Louise is a lawyer, accredited mediator, and someone who’s been through a divorce herself, to unpack where midlife, divorce and artificial intelligence are all colliding at once.
I came away with a lot to think about, and I suspect you will too.
In this episode…
Grey divorce is real, and it’s us
Kiki lead the conversation with some stats around divorce trends here in Australia (which are not that dissimilar to those in the US and elsewhere). Whilst divorce rates have remained reasonably steady overall it’s the divorces involving marriages of 20 years or more that have proportionally risen 20% in Australia since the 1980s. The shift is happening at the 50-plus stage of life.
Some of the numbers we discussed:
* Median age at divorce in Australia in 2025: 47.3 for men, 44.4 for women
* 29% of Australian divorces are now ‘grey divorces’ (people 50+)
* In the US, the rate of over-50s divorcing roughly doubled between 1990 and 2010.
* Overall divorce rates are sitting near their lowest since the mid-1970s - it’s specifically midlife driving the trend upward, not divorce in general
The HILDA data: love isn’t the problem, workload might be
The newly released HILDA survey (the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia study), has tracked around 17,000 Australians annually since 2001. The latest release says:
* 88% of women and 92% of men in long-term relationships report strong love for their partner
* Men’s weekly housework hours: 12.8 hours in 2022 - unchanged from 2002
* Women’s weekly housework hours: 18.4 hours, about 44% more than men, on top of far more paid work than 20 years ago
* 17% of men believed they were doing more than half the household load
We had a bit of a laugh about the ‘did you notice what I did?’ phenomenon - the tendency for a small domestic contribution to be announced and then quietly waited on for praise. Women report slightly but statistically lower relationship satisfaction than men, and women are more likely to eventually initiate separation.
Menopause, less f***s to give, and the Walkaway Wife
We talked about the pattern Louise saw repeatedly in her mediation work, where one partner (usually the woman in a heterosexual relationship) is further along the journey to wanting to end the relationship than the other; often after years of trying to communicate that something was wrong. Years of being met with avoidance, dismissal, or ‘she’s just going through a phase.’
Midlife as a time of BIG change. At the confluence of the Menopause transition and post menopause years. Not to say it’s a cause of divorce. It is, however, a time when women often remove their willingness to keep performing a role that no longer fits. Less want for keeping the peace, to be the one that holds others and things together. A greater desire to spend that energy on themselves. These are a values shift. Where her grieving was done in advance, often well before asking for the divorce.
[Menodivorce is an informal term used to describe a separation or divorce that happens during the menopause transition as women re-evaluate their long-term relationships and priorities.]
Women 50+ now are of a generation that increasingly believes they’re allowed to want more than stability. Unlike the generation before them, when marriage was often regarded as a means for security and stability. The HILDA supports this too with more women of this generation in paid work and careers, whilst also doing the vast majority of the at home duties and parenting too.
The Walkaway Wife is a term coined by clinical social worker and marriage therapist, Michele Weiner-Davis in 2008. A pattern (not a diagnosis) she named based on what she was consistently seeing in her therapy practice. Researchers have been calling this the demand-withdraw pattern for decades, one of the most replicated findings in marital communication research. [Interestingly, much of this research has been done on younger couples rather than older, married for longer, couples].
We also touched on how quickly this reality gets pathologised, including in the language of medicine itself. Hysterectomy shares its literal root with ‘hysteria’ both stemming from hystera, the Greek word for womb.
An uncomfortable reminder of how long women’s midlife changes have been framed as a problem to be managed rather than a legitimate turning point. Hmmm.
Hysteria aside, as women rethink their roles and what they want from the next chapter, many are turning not just to therapists or lawyers - but to AI.
AI As A Confidant And As A Tool
Our chat focused largely around these two distinct ways AI is showing up in grey divorce right now.
AI as a confidant.
People are using ChatGPT, Claude and similar AI platforms and chat bots as a sounding board to help process feelings, drafting hard messages and asking “am I being unreasonable here?” before ever raising it with a partner or their lawyer.
Helpful, but it comes with risks – potentially serious ones depending on your circumstance. Risks you may never have seen coming.
If AI conversations are used instead of legal counsel, it’s important to understand that they are not ‘privileged’(private and confidential) conversations, like those with a lawyer are.
From a legal standpoint, anything that is mentioned in that chat is potentially discoverable, meaning that it could be used as evidence in divorce proceedings if subpoenaed – to be used in court. Your AI conversation (prompt) history can absolutely be used to show a party’s state of mind, intent, or hidden assets.
AI can help you prepare - but never replace a lawyer, and assume anything you type could end up in court.
Louise’s warning here was clear and practical:
* De-identify everything. No names, addresses, or account details - anything you wouldn’t want surfacing in a legal dispute shouldn’t go in as a prompt (what you type in), in the AI conversation.
* Keep prompts neutral and factual. State the situation, not your case for why you’re right. AI validation feels good but doesn’t prepare you for a real negotiation. And AI will validate your feelings.
* Understand data retention. Deleting a chat from your screen doesn’t necessarily delete it from a provider’s servers. Temporary or incognito-style chat modes (like ChatGPT’s temporary chat) offer an extra layer of protection. But check each platform’s settings and turn off any option that allows your conversations to be used for model training.
* Protect your legal privilege. Never feed advice from your own lawyer into an AI tool, even to test it. Once privilege is waived, it can’t be clawed back. It can be waived far more easily than you may realise, sometimes just by handing over a document or referencing advice in the wrong context.
* Fact-check anything AI tells you about the law. It can get things wrong, or answer from the wrong jurisdiction entirely.
AI as a tool built into the process
Purpose-built platforms to help with divorce and mediation are on the rise. A fast-growing category of purpose-built platforms (with AI enabling them most probably). We ran through a few Australian examples like Amica, Adieu and Split Ways. International options are also included in the Resources section below with active links for you. Louise’s article has more too.
These free or cost effective tools are designed to inform and help in the division of property and assets including superannuation splitting which, for grey divorcees, can be a considerable asset to split. They can also assist in parenting allocations too. It’s surprising how many relationships even in this stage of life, involved parenting considerations.
Some sites can be used as a couple whilst other are for single-sided assessments and information gathering. Some can help refer you on to mediators, counselors , lawyers or financial advisors.
The risk of using AI instead of talking to your partner
Drawing on Louise’s experience, we also talk about how turning to AI for the hard conversations rather than to your actual partner is its own problem. It’s not just avoidance, it becomes a third dynamic in the relationship, one that lets resentment build in the dark rather than getting things resolved.
Where Grey Divorce and AI Could Be Heading
We closed by looking a little further down the road:
AI mediators are already emerging in commercial dispute settings in the US, and Louise expects family law won’t be far behind. Her concern is that mediation involves reading a room, sensing discomfort, and holding paradox in a way that’s genuinely hard to imagine AI replicating well.
She predicts a future ‘second wave’ of work for humans helping people fix outcomes reached through AI-assisted processes that didn’t hold up legally or emotionally.
Marrying an AI
Slightly off core focus but driven by deep curiosity, I confessed on air that I’d actually asked Claude whether anyone had ever proposed marriage to it. I read its reply in the podcast. Whilst it was intended as a bit of fun, it’s not entirely a joke. Louise knows of cases where people are wanting to leave long-term marriages for an AI relationship, including a symbolic AI marriage conducted using AR (augmented reality) glasses.
Final Thoughts
As AI companionship becomes more normalised, could we expect this to intersect with grey divorce in ways none of us have fully reckoned with yet?
What do you think? Let us know with a comment below.
Maybe you’d prefer to ‘comment’ in our poll below:
Thanks for being here. Both Kiki and I hope you found it helpful and a perhaps a little eye-opening. Here is her brilliant article Grey Divorce, Now With Artificial Intelligence. Well worth a read if this topic has your interest.
We will be chatting again on the podcast soon. We look forward to having you join us then.
If you know someone you think would benefit from watching/listening to this podcast chat, please send it on to them. That would be awesome. Thank you.
Until next time.
Anita xx
Resources mentioned
Government and general information
* Amica - Free, AI-assisted Australian government tool (Legal Services Commission of South Australia) for property and parenting agreements. Suggests a split based on relationship length, contributions, age, health and future needs, including superannuation. Non-binding agreement drafting from $297; draft consent orders on property from $990 (per the Attorney-General’s Department).
AI-assisted separation tools mentioned
* Split ways - a commercial fixed-fee separation service starting around $1,200, including lawyer review of consent orders.
* Our Family Wizard - co-parenting app for shared calendars, expense tracking and documented communication; court-recognised across the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
* AppClose — similar co-parenting and communication app, free to use, also court-recognised in multiple countries including Australia.
A general note on the international resources — Louise and I agreed the US, UK and Canada are likely ahead of Australia in this space. If you’re listening from overseas, it’s worth checking your own jurisdiction’s family law peak body website, or simply calling them, to find local equivalents.
US - Amicable Divorce Network - The Amicable Divorce Network connects vetted professionals (globally) who believe in a solutions-focused approach to divorce outside of the court system.
US (AI assisted tool)🔗 https://hellodivorce.com
Founded in 2018 by California family law attorney Erin Levine, Hello Divorce is a “TurboTax-style” platform that walks people through completing their own divorce paperwork, now covering all 50 states, with optional on-demand access to lawyers, mediators, and financial experts by the hour rather than a full retainer. Its AI assistant Hallie, built in partnership with Personal AI, gives 24/7 answers based on verified, state-specific legal data — including local county rules — rather than generic AI knowledge. Around 6,000 users tested the beta, using it for questions on custody, financial disclosure, and divorcing during pregnancy.
UK — Divorce-Online’s “Alex”🔗 https://www.divorce-online.co.uk/family-law-ai-help/An AI-powered adviser built on ChatGPT technology, trained on current England and Wales family law since 2023. Answers questions on divorce proceedings, financial settlements, consent orders and child arrangements, in multiple languages, 24/7. It’s a private commercial service (Divorce-Online is the UK’s original online divorce provider, running since 1999), not government-backed like amica.
Canada — Divorcepath🔗 https://www.divorcepath.comA Calgary-founded (2020) Canadian family law platform using AI to analyse financial records and generate child/spousal support calculations, court forms and separation agreements. Notably, it’s available free on public access computers across all 30 Courthouse Libraries BC branches, making it the closest thing I found in Canada to a publicly accessible equivalent of amica — though it’s privately built rather than government-run.
Europe (Netherlands) — Uitelkaar.nl🔗 https://uitelkaar.nlRun by Justice42, a Dutch social enterprise, and the successor to the pioneering Rechtwijzer platform. Couples draft their own separation agreement online at their own pace, supported by a personal case manager and a specialist lawyer, with a 5-day free trial and government legal-aid subsidy eligibility checks built in. It’s structured guided dialogue rather than a generative AI chatbot, and a 2024 academic paper on the platform specifically proposed adding AI natural-language processing to detect conflict escalation as a next step — so it sits right at the edge of becoming what you’re describing, rather than fully there yet.
Please Note:
This conversation is general information and reflection, not legal or financial advice.
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