This is one BC family lawyer's read on the family law software available to British Columbians in 2026, and the criticism below is opinion — fair-minded, but opinion. Four free tools cover most of what you'd want software to do during a separation: calculate child support, calculate spousal support, check whether you can file for divorce, and put a joint divorce in front of the court. None of them does all four. This post walks through each one, what it's good at, where it falls short, and what to use it for. Treat everything here as general information, not legal advice — and talk to a BC family lawyer before signing anything.
At a glance
| Tool | Cost | Child support | Spousal support (SSAG) | Divorce eligibility | Agreement drafting | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MySupportCalculator | Free | Yes (basic) | Yes (basic) | No | No | A quick support estimate |
| Family Law in BC | Free | Sample clauses | Sample clauses | Some info | Yes (as a guide) | Understanding what to include |
| BC Online Divorce Assistant | Free | No | No | Built into the questionnaire | No | Filing a joint divorce |
| Simply Separation | Free | Yes (full) | Yes (full SSAG) | Yes | Awaiting LSBC Approval | Numbers and eligibility |
There is no all-in-one option yet. The rest of this post is the long version.
MySupportCalculator.ca
What it is: a stripped-down free version of DivorceMate, the calculation engine that Canadian family law professionals and judges rely on. It handles both child support (under the Federal Child Support Guidelines) and spousal support (under the SSAG), and saves results to PDF.
The good: the same engine the professionals use. If you've ever wondered what your lawyer types into when they give you a support number, this is it — just with fewer inputs available to the public. The fact that the engine exists in any free public form is an access-to-justice win, and DivorceMate deserves credit for it.
The bad, in my view: the free tier is a bit stripped down. You get a headline range, but you don't see the detailed SSAG analysis behind it or the assumptions the calculator made. Industry coverage puts it bluntly — the free version "offers limited inputs from DivorceMate's full calculator". It's a sample of the engine, not the whole engine. And the tool ends where the calculation ends: no agreement, no divorce process, no parenting plan. It tells you a number; what you do with it is on you.
Use it for: a fast sanity-check on what support might look like before you call a lawyer.
Family Law in BC ("Write Your Own Separation Agreement" guide)
What it is: a clause-by-clause walk-through from the Justice Education Society of BC, "developed in cooperation with the Continuing Legal Education Society of BC" — better known as CLEBC. CLEBC publishes the precedent materials that BC family lawyers actually use, which makes this guide unusually credible for a free public resource. The guide covers parenting, child support, spousal support, property, and debt.
The good: free, legally grounded, and BC-specific. Sample clauses you can adapt. It's the closest the public has to a free version of what's sitting on the lawyer's desk.
The bad, in my view: it's a guided fill-in form, not flexible software. There's no calculator either, so you'd still go elsewhere for the support numbers. If you want the more nuanced clauses, the guide itself points you to CLEBC's professional manual, Family Law Agreements: Annotated Precedents — currently $319 for the print + online package, and clearly priced for practitioners, not the public.
Use it for: understanding what clauses could be in your separation agreement before you start drafting anything.
BC Government's Online Divorce Assistant
What it is: the provincial government's free online questionnaire that produces ready-to-file court paperwork for a joint divorce.
The good: free, government-built, and well-designed for what it does. The forms it produces are the court forms, so they should hopefully get accepted. You can save progress and file online or in person. For its intended audience — couples who already agree on everything — it's genuinely good.
The bad, in my view: it's a finish-line tool, and the page is upfront about its scope. "Joint divorce means making an application for a divorce together with your spouse. It means that you and your spouse agree about getting a divorce and that you agree about all of the family law issues relevant to your situation, such as spousal support, and the division of family property and debts." Translation: you and your spouse have to arrive at the door fully agreed — on parenting, support, property, debt, everything. There's no calculator, no negotiation help, and no way to use the tool if you disagree on any single issue. If you don't already have a separation agreement, this tool can't help you get one.
Use it for: the final step, once everything else is already settled.
Simply Separation
Disclosure first: this is the tool I'm involved in building, so read what follows knowing I'm biased toward it. Four browser-based tools, all free, no account needed, and the calculations run locally in your browser.
- BC Child Support Calculator — Schedule I lookup for all provinces, set-off for shared parenting over the 40% threshold, proportional Section 7 expenses. There's a fuller walkthrough in our BC child support guide.
- BC Spousal Support Calculator — both SSAG formulas (with-child and without-child), low/mid/high amounts plus duration, rule of 65, merger over time, full federal and provincial tax engines (every province and territory except Quebec), and integrated child support set-off. Walkthrough in our BC spousal support guide. If you want to run the actual numbers, the calculator will do it in about 30 seconds.
- BC Divorce Eligibility Checker — ordinary-residence jurisdiction check, same-roof separation checklist, and the 90-day reconciliation rule.
- Common-Law Checker — two-year cohabitation test, marriage-like factors, and a limitation-period countdown for unmarried spouses.
The good, in my biased view: the spousal support calculator runs the full SSAG analysis rather than producing a headline range, which is the main thing the public hasn't been able to get free anywhere else until now (to my knowledge). The calculation engine is open-source, the tax math runs every Canadian province and territory except Quebec, and there's no sign-up wall.
The bad — and I want to be honest about this: we don't yet have a separation agreement builder. The calculators give you the numbers; you still need to take them somewhere to turn them into a binding document. And every number is an estimate. Independent legal advice before signing anything is still the right move.
Use it for: getting the full picture of support and eligibility before you sit down to negotiate.
What's still missing in BC family law software
Here's the thing that nags at me about all of these tools, including ours. Each one solves one slice of the separation problem. None of them connect the slices.
You calculate support on one site. You fill out a guided form on another site that gives you a fixed-template agreement. You go to a third site to file the divorce. And the moment you and your ex disagree on any meaningful issue, none of these tools help — the BC government tool simply locks you out, and the rest weren't built for that conversation in the first place.
That's the gap we're working on next. Simply Separation is building an integrated Separation Agreement Builder with the calculators baked in, and a dispute resolution tool for the moments where couples get stuck. The aim is BC family law software that takes you from "we're separating" to "we're done" without ever asking you to copy a number from one tab into another. There'll be a waitlist when it's closer to ready.
FAQ
Is there free family law software in BC?
Yes, four free web tools cover most of what software can do. MySupportCalculator handles support estimates using DivorceMate's engine. The Justice Education Society's Family Law in BC guide walks through separation agreement clauses. The BC government's Online Divorce Assistant produces joint divorce paperwork. And Simply Separation runs SSAG, child support, divorce eligibility, and common-law status entirely in the browser. No single tool covers everything yet.
What's the best free BC child support calculator?
For most people, either MySupportCalculator or our BC Child Support Calculator will get you to the right number on the table amount. Both run off the Federal Child Support Guidelines tables. The big difference is Section 7 expenses — special and extraordinary expenses like daycare, orthodontics, and post-secondary costs. Our calculator splits those proportionally to income; MySupportCalculator's free tier doesn't run that calculation. For families where Section 7 expenses are a meaningful part of the budget, that gap matters.
What's the best free BC spousal support calculator?
This is where the gap is widest. MySupportCalculator's free tier gives a headline range. Our BC Spousal Support Calculator runs both SSAG formulas in full, with the actual tax math, child support set-off, rule of 65, and merger over time built in. When the numbers matter — and they almost always do — you want the full SSAG output, not a teaser.
Can I write my own separation agreement in BC?
You can. Whether you should is a different question. The Justice Education Society's Family Law in BC guide gives you sample clauses. The risk is that separation agreements bind you for years or decades, and badly drafted clauses are very hard to unwind later. At a minimum, I recommend retaining a BC family lawyer to review the draft before you sign.
Can I get divorced online in BC?
If you and your spouse already agree on everything, yes — through the BC government's Online Divorce Assistant. You still file at the Supreme Court of British Columbia, but the questionnaire produces the right forms and lets you file online. If you don't already have agreement on parenting, support, property, and debt, the tool isn't designed for your situation.
The short version
Use the right tool for the right job today. Run the support numbers on a calculator that shows the full SSAG analysis. Use a credible guide to understand what could be in your agreement. Pay a BC family lawyer to review the draft before you sign. And use the BC government's tool when — and only when — you and your spouse are already at the finish line together.
This post is general information and one practitioner's opinion, not legal advice. Before signing a separation agreement or filing for divorce, get advice from a BC family lawyer about your specific situation.