Divorce & Custody: Is Artificial Intelligence the Answer?

I love Artificial Intelligence. I use it just about every day. I have an AI app on my phone and a different AI app on my laptop, and I use Grok – Twitter/X’s version of AI. I use them all. It seems that we have finally gotten to the future.

When I was little, I was promised flying cars by the time I was 16 or so. Those have not arrived as promised. But I was also led to believe that we would have machines that we could ask any question to, and we would get an answer.

More than that, we were led to believe that the answer would be the correct answer.

Well, we have AI.

As of now, it’s fun to use. As I began, I love it – at least until it kills us all and eats our pets, I do.

It’s fun because it gives me an answer. Fast!

But, that second part of the promise – that the answer would be correct – has not arrived.

I was recently on a trip. I needed to make a hotel reservation in a small town that I had never been to before. Artificial Intelligence told me categorically that I needed to make my reservation at XYZ Hotel (not the real name it gave, but it’s one you would recognize).

I started to make my reservation. The problem was that the website for that brand kept kicking things back. Something wasn’t right.

What wasn’t right was that the Hotel that Artificial Intelligence told me was so great didn’t exist. It had never existed. The complete description that AI had given me was false.

Just a day or so ago, I was trying to find a language that I wanted to learn on a language-teaching app. I thought sure they had it as a choice. But I could not find it on their site.

So, I turned to AI. It assured me that the site offered it. It assured me that it offered two variations.

It didn’t and as near as I can tell, it never has.

Thirty-five years ago, I was in law school. I was very blessed and did well. I had a number of friends, though, that struggled, to one extent or another.

I will never forget one of our favorite Professors talking to my entire class about which courses to take in the upcoming semesters.

He said, “You can take these courses that will teach you what you need to know in order to pass the Bar Exam and practice law…or you can take these other courses that sound like fun, but don’t teach you anything really useful.”

He then went on, “If you are a really good student, and you want to take the fun classes, and just learn the things you need to learn when you study for the Bar Exam, that may work…it’s your choice.”

But, he said, “If you are not a great student, and you are barely learning the material you need to know by sitting through hour after hour of classes and studying the material daily…and YOU want to skip the important classes to take fun classes, and just figure you’ll learn everything you need to know ‘on your own’…with a couple hours of study when you’re getting ready for the Bar…”

“Well,” he said, “Okayyyyyyy…” And he had a look on his face like, “Are you really that naive?”

Now, back to you, the one reading this:

If you are going through a Custody case, you are clearly dealing with the most important thing there is – the lives of your children.

If you are going through a Divorce at the same time as or instead of a Custody case, you may be dealing with significant issues of property, support, or something worse. These are all critically important as well.

What happens to your Retirement Assets, what happens to the equity in your home, how debt is dealt with, and whether you pay or receive support can all be life changing things.

To paraphrase my former Professor, If none of that is you, and all you’re dealing with is who gets which car in a marriage that has lasted two or three years, with no family violence or disability issues, maybe Artificial Intelligence and doing it yourself is something to consider…

But if you are dealing with anything important, and you’re going to leave the result to an Invisible Entity that has no obligation to help you or provide competent advice and doesn’t even know what Hotels exist in a town with three or four Hotels…

Well…Okayyyyy...