“I had no car,” she said. “I had no money. When I got here, I was desperate.”

Here is Northern California. Ms. Emerson, who asked that her maiden name be used and her exact location not be revealed, spent the next eight months trying to collect enough money from friends and family to pay a lawyer’s retainer.

“I tried to get a loan against the house or our cabins,” she said. “But we own the properties jointly, so how was I going to get his signature on a loan?”

Efforts to reach her estranged husband and his lawyer were unsuccessful.

Ms. Emerson believes the marital estate is worth $4 million but she has no cash to pursue her half, which she is entitled to in a communal property state like California. So she turned to Novitas, a divorce funding company based in Britain that just last month set up operations in the United States.

Like other firms in the field, Novitas stakes the spouse without access to marital funds and collects its fee after a settlement is reached. How the companies do this is something each one is specific about, since their high interest rates can run afoul of state usury laws.

Novitas says it makes nonrecourse advances at rates of 1 percent to 1.5 percent a month — or 12 to 18 percent a year. A nonrecourse advance is one that the lender cannot recover if the divorce settlement does not yield a payout. Another firm, BBL Churchill Divorce Finance, makes loans for which they have recourse — if you don’t get a settlement you still owe money — and charges a similar interest rate. Balance Point Divorce Funding says it makes an investment in a person’s divorce, which entitles it to a percentage — it says it is double digits, but less than a third — of the entire settlement.