Divorce Alimony Calculator App Developed Using Xamarin [CASE STUDY]

Spousal support or popularly known as Alimony is ordered by a judge during a divorce legal case proceeding. Spousal support is considered when a spouse is facing certain hardships without financial aid. Our end customer is a licensed service provider and wanted to solve the chaos between money and divorce cases. Rishabh Software developed a mobile solution to streamline the legal process for child support, alimony calculator, legal matters, parenting plans, and equitable distribution. The mobile app was built using Xamarin cross-platform technology.

The divorce alimony mobile app was designed for lawyers for submitting cases which can be further used by other divorce lawyers, mediators, judges and those representing themselves in the court. The mobile app has an integrated alimony calculator to estimate the duration of alimony payment, how much alimony needs to be paid, and other possible alimony types besides the “traditional” model. The estimates generated by the app are in full compliance with the Alimony Reform Act, March 2012.

Apart from the alimony calculation, the mobile app should deliver estimates of child support based on the 2013 Massachusetts Child Support Guidelines. The calculation workflow first asks to enter the couple’s income with allowed deductions, and the mobile app will provide two child support estimates based on the amount of parenting time. The mobile app should have a feature to generate PDF document following the guidelines and ready for direct submission to the court for proceeding. The PDFs can also be shared via email with the judge, stored in the Dropbox cloud or can be printed for minimizing the documentation process.

• Generating PDF reports as per the legal & official standards
• Custom child support calculation
• Data security & legal workflow
• Robust document management & storage
• Cluttered user experience

Rishabh Software with its cross-platform mobile application development team implemented the alimony and child support calculator to collaborate, users, lawyers, courthouse for finding accurate case information as per the US law of Massachusetts state. We were given an existing iOS native app which required further feature addition. We leveraged Xamarin cross-platform technology to minimize the development cost, increase device adoption and app usability. We analyzed the legal documentation and developed custom PDFs to follow the formats prescribed by the court. We followed a waterfall model, and the Xamarin based mobile app was developed in the following manner:

• Developed a new flat UI design with animations to improve user experience
• Implemented the 2017 Massachusetts state guidelines in the mobile application
• Changed the business logic of the application and tested on both platform (iOS, Android) with minor UI changes

Initially, we developed a proof of concept application on iOS platform, and after client’s approval, we generated the code for Android platform. Code reusability was achieved with the help of Xamarin platform, saving development time and efforts.

• Simplified alimony processing & calculation
• Better user experience with minimalistic navigation structure
• Real-time case data availability and calculation
• An easy way to share document using drop-box email
• The first app of its kind that generates PDF of court-approved forms and air print capabilities

Legal

US-based legal service provider

• C#
• Xamarin
• Cloud Rail API Integration
• Dropbox Server
• Email Server