AI for Family Law: 12 Tasks and the Tools for Each (2026)

AI for family law means software that takes a defined, repeatable task off a divorce or custody file, under a lawyer's review. It helps most on the work that repeats in every divorce: answering intake calls, drafting parenting plans and motions, reading the other side's financial records for gaps, reviewing texts and emails, and capturing billable time. It shouldn't set child support, because your state guideline does. It can't replace your judgment.

The slowest step is often somewhere else: getting your own client's disclosure documents in, complete, before the deadline. That is a follow-up problem, not a drafting problem, and it has its own tools. I build one of them, DokuTrak, so I'll say where it fits and where it doesn't. Below are the 12 tasks of a dissolution matter, in the order the file meets them, with the tools for each and what they cost.

Key Takeaways

• Choose AI for family law by task, not by brand. The best drafting assistant is not the best intake tool, and neither one collects your client's bank statements.
• Legal AI assistants (CoCounsel Legal, Paxton, Lexis+ with Protégé) are strongest at drafting and at reviewing large document sets.
• Support math belongs to your state guideline. Every state must set one and review it at least every four years under federal rules.
• The disclosure packet has hard deadlines: 45 days in Florida, 60 days in California. Chasing the client for it is where files stall.
• Before client confidences go into a generative tool, read ABA Formal Opinion 512 and your state bar's guidance.

AI for family law at a glance: 12 tasks, the tools, the price

Prices are the entry price on each vendor's own pricing page, checked on September 19, 2026. "Client data" means the tool holds your client's confidential information, which is when Rule 1.6 and your vendor's data terms matter.

Intake and conflict checks

Task 1: Answering intake calls and running the conflict check

Family law clients call in crisis, and often after hours. Hans Guntren, writing in the ABA's Law Technology Today in February 2026, calls "communication intensity" one of the primary drivers of burnout in the field: clients "call, text, and email when fear and uncertainty peak." Before the firm takes the matter, it has to clear conflicts on every party, including the spouse (ABA Model Rules 1.7 and 1.10).

• Smith.ai puts 24/7 live receptionists, backed by AI, on your line. Plans start at $300 a month for 30 calls; basic new-client intake is free, and a conflict check against your CRM costs $0.50 a call.
• Lawmatics is a legal CRM with intake forms, conflict checking and automations. Pricing is on request.
• Clio Manage and Clio Grow run a conflict check against your existing contacts and matters, and return a result when any detail you enter appears anywhere in Clio.

If you already run a practice-management system, check what it does before you buy a second tool. The law firm client intake checklist lists what to collect at the first meeting, including the family and financial documents.

The financial disclosure packet

Task 2: Collecting your client's disclosure documents, and following up

None of the top-ranking guides to AI for family law I read in September 2026 cover this task, and it runs on a court-rule clock. Every divorce needs mandatory financial disclosure, and the rules name documents and periods:

Sources: Florida Family Law Rule 12.285 (in The Florida Bar's edition of the Family Law Rules) and the California Courts' divorce disclosures page. Florida's rule has more items and thresholds than fit here. Check your state's rule and local forms before you build a list.

The documents live with your client, not with you. So the job is a chase: one email with the list, then a follow-up, then another when half the files arrive. Then come the wrong files: a bank statement for the wrong month, page 1 of 3, a phone photo of a pay stub nobody can read, last year's W-2 instead of this year's. Each one restarts the loop.

Here is an illustration, not a measurement. Say you have 15 open matters, each needing about 4 follow-ups to complete a Florida-style list, at 5 minutes each. That's 5 hours of follow-up per cycle, before anyone re-requests a statement that came in for the wrong month. Swap in your own numbers.

DokuTrak handles this one task. You send the client one itemized request that lists the disclosure documents by name and period. The client uploads from one link, with no account to create. Scheduled reminders go out until the list is complete, written as file status updates ("Your file: 5 of 9 documents received"), not as nagging. At upload, AI flags a file that looks wrong, unreadable or mismatched, and says why. You accept each file, or ask for it again. The software never accepts a document for you. I explain the flagging step in more detail in how AI checks client files at upload.

What it doesn't do matters as much. DokuTrak does not review the opposing party's disclosure, compute support, draft anything, or give legal advice. It does not replace Clio or MyCase; it sits beside them. Plans are Solo $79/mo, Team $199/mo and Agency $449/mo, with a 14-day trial and no card at signup.

Two alternatives: Lawmatics intake forms can include file requests, and Family Law Software has a client data-entry feature that collects the figures, though not the documents themselves. If you'd rather stay in email, these document request email templates help, and how to stop chasing clients for documents lays out the full system.

Task 3: Preparing the financial affidavit

Guntren puts the problem plainly: "Financial disclosures shift as spouses change jobs, income, or assets." Each change means rebuilding a state-specific form.

Family Law Software fills state financial forms, including California's Income and Expense Declaration, Florida's financial affidavits and New York's Net Worth Statement. Cloud Basic is $39.95 a month plus a $99 setup fee.

Reading the other side's numbers, and support math

Task 4: Reviewing the other side's disclosure for gaps and hidden assets

This is where legal AI earns its price. "A single case can involve thousands of pages of financial records," Guntren writes, and AI tools can "flag missing disclosures, and surface anomalies—such as unusual financial transactions that may suggest hidden assets." He's the co-founder and CEO of Deliberately.ai, which sells AI to family law firms, so read that as a description of the work, not as neutral evidence.

• CoCounsel Legal (Thomson Reuters) identifies financial inconsistencies and undisclosed assets across large document sets. Pricing is on request.
• Paxton organizes and analyzes financial disclosures and flags inconsistencies. It costs $499 per user per month, or $2,999 per user per year, with a 7-day trial.

Either one reviews what the other side produced. Neither gets your own client to produce anything. That is task 2.

Task 5: Support is a guideline calculation, not an AI answer

No general AI tool should produce your support number. Under 45 CFR 302.56, every state must establish child support guidelines and review them at least once every four years. The number comes from the guideline.

Use your state's official calculator. California's guideline calculator is a public state tool, but it says plainly that it "provides only an estimate" and that the commissioner or judge has the final authority. Family Law Software runs support calculations for the 22 states listed on its site. A chatbot can explain what the inputs mean. It should not compute the result.

Parenting plans, evidence and drafting

Task 6: Drafting parenting plans and custody agreements

"Every divorce... requires financial disclosures, parenting plans, custody schedules," Guntren notes. Paxton drafts parenting plans, custody agreements and support motions. CoCounsel Legal drafts parenting-plan language from structured inputs. On first drafts, both beat a blank Word document. You still edit every clause.

Task 7: Reviewing texts, emails and co-parenting records

Cases can carry "years of text messages, emails, and photographs." CoCounsel Legal reviews texts, emails, and guardian ad litem and CPS reports, and builds timelines from them. Co-parenting apps keep cleaner records to begin with: OurFamilyWizard gives professionals invited by the client free access to view activity and download records, and parent plans start at $110 a year. TalkingParents sells records packages, and its Ultimate plan adds an AI Sentiment Scanner and Writing Assist; plans start at $7 a month.

Task 8: Pleadings, petitions and routine forms from templates

"Experienced attorneys already rely on checklists and templates," Guntren writes, "but these systems are often informal, siloed." Gavel turns your templates into automated documents and client-facing forms, and integrates with Clio; Lite is $83 a month billed monthly, with a 7-day trial. Lexis+ with Protégé drafts motions and agreements from the materials you upload; pricing is on request.

Research, deadlines and hearings

Task 9: Legal research and citation checking

Model Rule 1.1, comment 8, asks lawyers to keep up with "the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology." The AAML's ethics article on AI in family law points to the cases of fabricated AI citations and says to verify every citation independently. Lexis+ with Protégé checks citations in its answers and drafts with Shepard's Verify. CoCounsel Legal grounds research in Westlaw content. Paxton searches a database of family law case law, statutes and court rules. Verify anyway.

Task 10: Court deadlines and the hearing calendar

Disclosure alone runs on a rules-based clock (45 days in Florida, 60 in California), before any temporary hearing. LawToolBox calculates rules-based deadlines for state and federal courts and syncs them to your calendar. It costs $35 per user per month, billed annually.

Client communication and billing

Task 11: Meeting notes and client updates

Model Rule 1.4 requires you to keep clients reasonably informed, and family law clients repeat questions under stress. Otter.ai transcribes meetings and writes summaries; there is a free plan, and Pro is $16.99 per user per month billed monthly. Claude Team from Anthropic can draft client updates; a standard seat is $25 a month billed monthly, and Anthropic states it does not train models on Team content by default. Record only with consent, and only in a tool whose data terms fit Rule 1.6.

One line for your engagement letter: clients pasting your letters into public chatbots may waive privilege. Ward and Smith's April 2026 advisory describes a New York federal ruling that held conversations with a public AI chatbot were not privileged.

Task 12: Time capture and billing

ABA Formal Opinion 512 (July 29, 2024) says fees for AI-assisted work must be reasonable, and that, in most circumstances, you cannot charge a client for learning how to use a generative AI tool (ABA news release). Billables AI captures time passively across email, calendar and documents, and integrates with Clio and MyCase; Standard is $47 per user per month. Clio handles time tracking and billing inside the practice-management system.

How to choose, and what not to hand to AI

Start with the task that stalls your files, not the tool that demos best. For most small family law practices, it's one of three: intake after hours, the client's own disclosure packet, or first drafts. Buy for that one task, run it on a few matters, then add the next.

Three things stay with you. The support number comes from your state guideline. The decision to accept a document, or a draft, is yours. Advice to a client in crisis is yours. Everything else in the table is fair to delegate, with review.

Ethics checklist before you add an AI tool

This is what the published guidance says, not legal advice. Check your state bar's own opinion.

1. Confidentiality (Rule 1.6). Read the vendor's data terms: storage, retention, and whether your inputs train its models. Anthropic states there is no model training on Claude Team content by default; Paxton states your documents are never used for training.
2. Informed consent. Formal Opinion 512 requires informed client consent before client confidences go into a self-learning generative tool. Boilerplate in the engagement letter is not enough.
3. Verification. Check every citation and every figure. The AAML article is blunt about the sanctions risk.
4. Supervision (Rules 5.1 and 5.3). Treat AI output like a junior's first draft.
5. Fees (Rule 1.5). Bill reasonably for AI-assisted work, and not for learning the tool.

Where to start

If intake or drafting is your bottleneck, the legal AI assistants above are the place to look. If your files stall waiting on the client's own bank statements and pay stubs, that part is a follow-up job. See how DokuTrak works for law firms, or start a free 14-day trial and send your first disclosure request today.