Sebastopol-based website lets you register for divorce donations

A Sebastopol-based national crowdsourcing registry that helps people raise money for everything from new babies to funeral expenses has added “divorce” to its menu.

So just as starry-eyed couples seek help financing their June weddings and honeymoons, those less lucky in love can tin-cup their friends and family to help offset the often exorbitant price of breaking up.

The cost of a typical contested divorce can run from $1,500 to $15,000, according to a 2006 Forbes survey, even more if you factor in the fallout costs of child custody and splitting up households.

Sara Margulis co-founded the successful Honeyfund site a decade ago to help people finance their honeymoons, and followed with Plumfund, which helps finance life events such as baby showers and medical bills, as well as charitable causes and community fundraisers.

Divorce now has joined the list, she said, because people want to help their friends, no matter what the circumstance.

“Giving feels good. People want to help,” Margulis said. “It doesn’t matter the reason or the hardship. When you see a loved one going through something difficult, you want to help and often don’t know how.”

Since the divorce registry went live in March, 219 people have created divorce funds, looking for as little as $300 to finalize a divorce to the $100,000 goal one woman set to help a disabled friend whose husband walked out after 25 years of marriage.

Margulis and her husband Josh, a software engineer, came up with the idea for the Honeyfund after their own wedding in 2005. They had everything they needed for their home and wedding but fell short of financing the honeymoon of their dreams.

“We couldn’t find a website that didn’t charge crazy fees, so we put together our own wedding page,” said Margulis, an Analy High graduate and mother of Audrey, 9 and Benjamin, 6.

They were blown away when friends and family kicked in $5,000 for a two-week luxury trip to Fiji. Honeyfund has gone on to become popular and profitable.

Plumfund, which followed later, did not have the same financial success, so the couple turned to reality TV for help. They appeared on ABC’s “The Shark Tank,” a show on which budding entrepreneurs float their ideas, attempting to convince a panel of business titans to invest in their dreams. They snagged an investment from “shark” Kevin O’Leary, the software mogul who founded The Learning Company.

Last fall they appeared on “Beyond the Tank,” a follow-up show that checks the progress of former contestants. They again asked for help boosting their flagging free crowdfunding site Plumfund and were given a free consultation with Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post.

“Arianna is an amazing woman,” said Sara Margulis, 42. “It truly was an honor to meet her and benefit from her wisdom and experience.”

She told them that HuffPost Divorce is one of the more visited features on her site, which Huffington claims has 4 million unique users a month. Conceding that the idea might sound strange, Huffington advised that adding a Divorce Fund might help keep Plumfund afloat and suggested a win-win situation.

Huffington suggested posting personal stories from Plumfund as “free content” on the Post, with a tab that would allow her readers, if moved, to make immediate contributions.

The online media mogul is no stranger to the subject. She went through a very public divorce in 1997, after which her ex, former Congressman Michael Huffington, disclosed that he was bisexual.

“She felt people don’t get the level of support they need when they’re going through a divorce,” Margulis said. “Her point was that it’s something nobody else is doing that we could own.”

Margulis also had experience with the phenomenon, establishing a help fund for a close friend embroiled in an eight-year custody battle.

“In the end she was completely depleted financially and emotionally,” Margulis said. “I set up a Plumfund for her to help rally her community. So when Arianna brought it up, I agreed.”

It remains to be seen how compelling a cause divorce will be for folks seeking to rally their tribes.

Bobby Garcia, a 38-year-old granite counter installer from Indiana, was one of the first to request help on Plumfund during a divorce from a woman who has for three years kept him from seeing his 9-year-old daughter. He had already spent $6,000 in legal fees and needs $4,000 to hire another lawyer so he can remarry. His soon-to-be father-in-law suggested giving Plumfund a try.

“I heard of a guy who got $40,000 to make the world’s biggest potato salad,” Garcia said. “If he could get all that for potato salad ... I just want a divorce.”

So far Garcia said he has gotten $200 from relatives, not enough to pay for an hour of attorney’s fees. But he persists.

“I do need to promote it,” he lamented. “I feel kind of bad re-posting it on Facebook. It’s weird for me to sit here with my hand out. Everybody works hard for their money.”

Margulis said the overall feedback has been positive, and she’s maintaining a good humor as she girds for the inevitable tongue-in-cheek cracks about couples who can conveniently register for a marriage and divorce, all in one site visit.

“There’s nothing more sticky than the topic of a Honeyfund,” she said. “It’s one of the most highly debated topics in the wedding world - whether or not to have one. We’ve already survived 10 years with that kind of controversy. So I don’t think anything that could come out of a divorce fund would sway us.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204.