Screening (S0A) — divorce-financial-analysis
Prepared 2026-09-18 UTC for claim tsk_20260918031508_7krln. Sources: Keyword research REPORT.md, google-ads-comparison.json (DataForSEO Google Ads volumes, U.S. + California, English, Google Search network, requested window 2025-09-01–2026-08-31, retrieved 2026-09-17), and this venture's brief.md / venture.json (hypothesis, ICP, proposed $999/matter price). No paid traffic, no landing page, and no customer contact were run for this screen; metrics.json is still all zeros — there is no behavioral evidence yet, only search-volume and CPC data.
Demand
Buyer-language searches split into two groups, and they point at different products:
| Search (U.S./California, monthly avg, cached 2026-09-17) | U.S. | CA | CA CPC |
|---|---|---|---|
| forensic accountant divorce | 1,600 | 210 | $15.14 |
| certified divorce financial analyst | 1,900 | 320 | $14.58 |
| divorce financial planner | 1,900 | 170 | $25.81 |
| divorce financial advisor | 590 | n/a (US only in this file) | $16.59 |
| divorce accountant | 110 | n/a | $23.35 |
| divorce financial analyst | 390 | 50 | $13.08 |
| california spousal support calculator | 2,900 | 2,400 | $1.45 |
| divorce financial analysis software | unavailable | unavailable | unavailable |
| divorce accounting software | unavailable | unavailable | unavailable |
| divorce asset division software | unavailable | unavailable | unavailable |
| divorce discovery / document analysis | unavailable | unavailable | unavailable |
| rsu divorce | 10 | 10 | unavailable |
| ai forensic accounting | 20 | unavailable | $25.94 |
| ai divorce financial analysis | unavailable | unavailable | unavailable |
These rows overlap (a person can trigger several) and are search events, not unique people; they must not be summed into a customer count. Professional-help search demand is real (forensic accountant, CDFA, financial planner/advisor terms all carry meaningful volume and double-digit CPCs, indicating commercial intent and paid competition). Software-category demand is not established: every "software," "analysis," or "discovery/document analysis" phrase returned null or single-digit volume in both geographies, and "rsu divorce" — the brief's flagship wedge — is only 10/month nationally. Calculator traffic (2,400/month CA for spousal support) is large but is evidence of a different, free-tool intent, not paid document-analysis demand.
Evidence gap the prior report did not close: the ICP is attorneys, but every measured keyword is a consumer-facing search term. No attorney-specific search behavior (e.g., practice-management, case-prep, or B2B software terms) was collected. If the actual go-to-market is attorney referral/sales rather than consumer search ads, this keyword set measures the wrong audience's intent, and reachable-market math built on it is an approximation of a proxy, not of the named customer.
Market and acquisition
TAM/serviceable-niche/reachable-prospects were not separately measured this pass; only the search-volume proxy above exists. Using the report's own illustrative arithmetic (its explicit caveat: "not a forecast"): capturing 10% of the 210 monthly California "forensic accountant divorce" searches as paid clicks yields ~252 clicks/year from that single phrase. That is one keyword in one state, not a market size, and it is a consumer search term standing in for an unmeasured attorney channel. Reach through attorney partnerships, referral, or professional networks — the channel brief.md actually proposes — has no volume evidence at all; the next research/behavioral step needs to measure that channel directly rather than reuse consumer PPC numbers as a stand-in.
Durability
Divorce filings are a continuously replenishing cohort (new filings occur every year), so the underlying need does not expire, but no source here quantifies California divorce-filing counts or RSU/stock-comp prevalence among filers — that population estimate is unknown, not zero. Per-customer durability is weak by design: a divorcing consumer is a one-time buyer (no plausible repeat divorce). Repeat use would have to come from the attorney side (a firm buying the tool again for a new client's case), which is exactly what the venture's own "Paid attorney pilot" experiment (brief.md) is meant to test and has not yet been run. Treat this as a one-time-purchase-per-consumer, possibly-repeat-per-attorney model until that pilot produces evidence.
Economics
One-time purchase (per matter), so annual and lifetime figures per customer are treated as equal absent any observed repeat/referral. Price is the brief's unapproved $999/matter proposal, not an approved public price. CPC and conversion assumptions are taken directly from the prior report's own scenario table (California "forensic accountant divorce" CPC = $15.14), which already flagged these conversion rates as assumptions, not measured results.
| Scenario | Click→buyer rate | CAC (ad cost/buyer) | Delivery cost/matter | Revenue/matter | Contribution after CAC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 1% | $1,514.00 | $350 | $999 | -$865.00 |
| Base | 2% | $757.00 | $200 | $999 | $42.00 |
| Optimistic | 5% | $302.80 | $100 | $999 | $596.20 |
The base case clears CAC + delivery by only $42/matter before acquisition labor, fixed overhead, tax, insurance, refunds, or professional-review costs — consistent with the prior report's own read that this is "too thin to rely on." Conservative is outright negative. Only the optimistic case (5% of paid clicks converting to a $999 purchase, an unverified assumption) produces a comfortable margin. None of these figures come from an attorney-channel CAC; they are consumer-search-ads economics applied to a stated B2B ICP.
Decision: revise
Three unresolved items block a proceed call, and none of them are solved by buying more of the same keyword data:
- Channel/ICP mismatch. The only demand and cost evidence collected is
consumer Google Search intent; the named buyer is a California attorney. The reachable-prospect and CAC numbers above are a proxy, not a measurement, of the actual go-to-market.
- Software-category demand is unproven. Every direct "software" /
"document analysis" / "RSU divorce" search term is null or negligible in both markets, so a search-led launch for the exact product described in brief.md has no support in this data (professional-service search demand does not transfer automatically to a software buyer).
- **Base-case economics are marginal ($42/matter) and exclude acquisition
labor, overhead, insurance, and professional-review cost**, none of which are captured in this file's delivery-cost assumptions.
Named assumption that kills the idea if false: that a California family-law attorney will pay ~$999 for an automated, source-linked support/RSU workup without requiring it to be backed by a credentialed sign-off — this is untested; the report's citation of a firm selling divorce accounting services and CDFA certification supports demand for *credentialed humans*, not uncredentialed software output.
Next cheapest behavioral test (unchanged from the prior report, still not run): offer one source-linked support/RSU workup, manually fulfilled, to a small number of California family-law firms with an open matter, and observe whether any pay and whether a second matter follows — per brief.md's "Paid attorney pilot" experiment. Do not spend on consumer paid traffic before that signal exists; the base-case margin is too thin to absorb consumer-search CAC risk, and the ICP being tested is attorneys, not consumers.
Required inputs that remain unknown and are left null in screening.json because no source measures them: attorney-channel reachable prospects, attorney-channel CAC, California divorce-filing/RSU-prevalence population, and any repeat/referral rate. These block promotion by design.