MOST of the employees at the Centre for Out-of-Court Divorce in Denver are trained in mediation or social work, but they also pay close attention to interior design. The centre, on the ground floor of a nondescript office block, is decorated with photos of smiling children and stocked with dolls’ houses, stuffed animals and board games. It has three exits in case tensions flare and the separating partners need personal space. They have been used a few times since 2013, when the centre began helping to dissolve marriages, says Susan Carparelli, the centre’s executive director; but not many.

The centre is one of several new enterprises that seek to make divorce cheaper and more amicable. Another, Wevorce, uses mostly online methods to guide couples through the process. Based on their answers to a survey, potential divorcees are assigned one of 18 “archetypes” and walked through the legal, financial and emotional processes of ending a marriage. Its website promises to help couples divorce in less time, for less money, with less conflict. Separate.us, which began operations in 2015, offers online legal guidance for divorcing pairs from $99.

Although parents who disapprove of their children’s partners may be quick to warn that half of all marriages end in divorce, that statistic no longer holds true. According to the National Centre for Family and Marriage Research (NCFMR), a think-tank, the divorce rate in America has fallen by 25% from 1980, reaching a 40-year low. In 2015 there were 16.9 divorces per 1,000 married women, down from 22.6 in 1980. This dip is in part because of America’s ageing population. Older couples are far less likely to divorce than younger ones. Another factor is that far fewer Americans are getting married in the first place, partly because not being married carries less stigma than before, says Susan Brown of the NCFMR. But divorce is still common—more than 800,000 marriages were annulled in 2014—and it is often costly and protracted. A survey by Nolo, a legal publisher, suggests the average American couple spends $15,000 and 10.7 months untying the knot.

The legal system often adds insult to cost and time. Rebecca Love Kourlis, director of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, which helped create the Centre for Out-of-Court Divorce, explains that America’s adversarial approach to divorce “fans the flames of controversy”. Most divorces are handled through litigation. Even if the decision to part ways is mutual, that litigation always involves a plaintiff, or the person who proposed the divorce, and a defendant. Conflict-of-interest rules generally bar the same lawyer from representing both parties in a divorce proceeding. Only a handful of divorce cases are actually settled in court, but traditional litigation inherently promotes the idea that the couple’s interests are at odds.

The Centre for Out-of-Court Divorce offers a more collaborative approach. For a flat fee of $4,500 partners who wish to uncouple are provided with a customised package of mediation, counselling, and assistance with financial planning and custody schedules. In a windowless conference room, aspiring divorcees sit at a table topped with multiple calculators and two separate boxes of tissues. On a whiteboard, they can work out school pick-up schedules and holiday budgets. Across the hall in the playroom, a therapist might watch how their child responds to various toys. Does he or she gravitate towards the miniature green bottles in the dolls’ house? That prompts the therapist to find out whether one of the parents has been drinking to dull their pain. Divorces at the centre normally take 40 hours spread over six months, but there is no set time cap if a split turns out to be particularly complex.

Ms Carparelli recognises that the service will not be right for all couples. Where there is abuse or when the couple has a lot of trouble communicating, litigation may be more appropriate. But for a large share of separating couples it may well be the future, like “introducing a cell-phone into a world of landlines”.