Building a Separation Contract with AI
I used Claude Code to draft a separation contract under Washington State’s RCW 26.09.070 — a provision that lets married couples formalize their separation by private agreement, without filing for dissolution.
Why a Separation Contract?
Washington offers several paths when a marriage ends: dissolution (divorce), legal separation, or a separation contract. The contract route is the least common but has some distinct advantages:
- No court filing required — effective immediately upon signing
- Parties remain legally married — preserving tax filing status, health insurance eligibility, and Social Security spousal benefits
- Convertible — either party can petition to convert to dissolution at any time
- Private — no public court record
The tradeoff is enforceability. A court decree carries contempt power; a contract relies on breach-of-contract remedies and arbitration. For an uncontested separation where both parties are aligned, that tradeoff works.
What the Contract Covers
The agreement addresses everything a dissolution decree would:
- Property division — allocation of real property, financial accounts, business interests, vehicles, and debts
- Asset transfers — in-kind transfer of capital assets between brokerage accounts, with tax treatment documented under IRC §1041
- Spousal support — fixed monthly payments for a defined term, with specific termination triggers
- Housing — a contractual lease arrangement for one of the properties
- Parenting plan — custody, visitation, international travel consent, and medical decision-making for a minor child
- Health insurance and life insurance — continuation terms
- Dispute resolution — mediation first, then binding arbitration
- Tax coordination — joint filing obligations during the support term
Using AI as a Drafting Tool
I used Claude Code to produce the initial draft, working iteratively from a detailed fact sheet. The process looked like this:
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Structured the facts — I maintained a markdown file with every relevant detail: personal information, asset valuations, custody preferences, tax considerations, and open questions. This became the source of truth.
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Drafted article by article — Rather than generating the whole contract at once, I worked through each section: recitals, definitions, property division, asset transfer mechanics, spousal support, parenting plan, and general provisions.
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Stress-tested the terms — I asked Claude to argue against the contract — play devil’s advocate on enforceability, tax exposure, custody risks, and unconscionability. This surfaced several issues I hadn’t considered.
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Iterated on details — Section numbering errors, duplicate clauses, missing end dates on obligations. The kind of things that matter when a document needs to be precise.
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Generated the PDF — Pandoc to HTML, Chrome headless to PDF. Clean, professional output from a markdown source file that lives in version control.
The result is a 13-page contract that covers the same ground as a dissolution decree, structured as a private agreement between two parties who happen to still be married.
What AI Won’t Do
This is not legal advice, and AI is not a lawyer. The contract will be reviewed and finalized by both parties’ attorneys before signing. What AI provided was:
- A well-organized first draft that saved significant attorney time
- A structured way to think through edge cases (What if one party dies? What if the tax law changes? What if the child wants to change custody?)
- A devil’s advocate that doesn’t bill by the hour
The attorneys will add what AI can’t: jurisdiction-specific judgment, enforceability opinions, and the professional liability that comes with signing off on a legal document.
The Takeaway
For anyone navigating a complex but uncontested separation, the combination of a detailed fact sheet, iterative AI drafting, and attorney review is remarkably efficient. The AI handles the volume and structure; the attorneys handle the judgment and liability. Neither could do the other’s job well, but together they compress what would normally be weeks of back-and-forth into days.