AOL Business has a great profile on the Fairway Divorce Solutions franchise:
All’s fair in love and war, which may be why divorce often seems unfair. One person usually leaves the union feeling especially burned, either because he or she was blindsided and didn’t see the end coming, or because one person got the house and car, and the other got the pet rock and Slim Whitman albums.
Karen Stewart, 47, set out to change that. Four years ago, she created Fairway Divorce Solutions (get it? a “fair way” to solve a divorce) after several years of working on her business plan. She had plenty of inspiration. She divorced her husband around the turn of the century in a bruising, emotional legal battle. By the time it was over, she had spent half a million dollars in legal bills and realized she and her ex-husband, who both live in Calgary, Alberta, and share custody of three children, would never be friends.
“Our kids are thriving, but [the loss of friendship] is sad,” says Stewart. “With the affidavits, the court filings — he was never able to move through that, and that’s okay. But it’s unnecessary to have that outcome. Kids want their parents to be friendly even if they’re divorced.”
But this was as unfriendly a divorce as you get. Stewart ended up writing a book about her experiences, Clean Break: How to Divorce with Dignity and Move On with Your Life, and creating Fairway Divorce Solutions. In 2008, two years after opening for business, she began franchising.