It was 2021 when she decided to end it. But Feinglos was surprised to discover then that the state she was living in, North Carolina, requires couples to reside in separate homes continuously for a full year before they can even file.

“In amicable divorces you could lie, but I did not have an amicable divorce,” she told me. “It took 18 months for my divorce to be signed by a judge, and we did not have children.”

When she was finally out of her marriage she felt angry. She knew that many people could not afford to live in separate places, let alone pay for the attorneys needed to navigate all the fraught legal proceedings. Feinglos, a former state government employee with a master’s degree in public policy, started researching divorce laws nationwide. “It was so confusing even for me,” she said. “This was before ChatGPT, and all the Google search results were from family attorneys saying, ‘Oh this is really complicated, you definitely need to hire us to help you.’” She has spent the years since pushing to change those laws.

North Carolina is one of a handful of states, including South Carolina and Arkansas, that require couples to live separately for a set period before they can file for no-fault divorce. Most states make couples wait after they file, a “cooling-off” period meant to give spouses a chance to change their minds. In Wyoming, it’s 20 days. In Missouri, 30. In California, couples need to wait six months, and having children can stretch the timelines further. In some states the clock only starts when one’s spouse is formally served, which means a husband or wife who’s hard to track down can add weeks to the wait before it even begins.

“The system sets people up for conflict, sets people up for war,” said Erin Levine, a former divorce lawyer who founded a company that helps people navigate divorce outside the traditional law firm model. “In some states it’s called a ‘petition,’ in some states it’s called a ‘complaint,’ the forms say ‘spouse v. spouse’ — you are being sued.”