Agile/22″/1stLK/mark2nd

By SARA FISHER

Staff Reporter

In the wake of her divorce, Maralyn Facey went from being an interior designer to a software designer.

She didn’t plan on changing careers, but when she walked into her lawyer’s office to find him sitting on the floor surrounded by colored pencils and a calendar charting a joint-custody schedule for her 3-year-old daughter, Facey knew there had to be a better way.

She and her business partner, a single father named Cosmas Demiteriou, founded Lapin Agile Software Inc. in the garage of Facey’s Rancho Park home. The company’s first product is Kidmate, a program that helps parents and attorneys through the often difficult process of negotiating joint-custody arrangements.

The software is straightforward. The user enters each parent’s request for time and the child’s own schedule, and the program generates a year-long joint-custody calendar. Conflicts between parents’ requests are red-flagged, as are holidays, which tend to be the most difficult times in joint-custody arrangements. The program also calculates the exact percentage of time a child spends with each parent, a key factor in determining child-support payments.

Since its November debut, Kidmate has received a warm reception. The software, which retails for $450, generated revenues of about $10,000 a month in the first few months of its release. But sales in March took off, hitting $25,000. Lapin Agile currently distributes its product across the United States and in Canada.

“This program is so much easier than having to chart out time-share schedules by hand, which has been the general practice,” said Alexandra Leichter, a certified family law specialist in Beverly Hills. “By visually showing the various permutations of a joint-custody schedule, Kidmate epitomizes the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. The (judges, parents and lawyers) involved in custody cases can easily see how a custody schedule works and exactly how much time a child spends with each parent.”

Neither Facey nor her partner Demiteriou had experience in software development, just a background in navigating their own joint-custody cases. Facey also is the editor of “Solo,” a bimonthly newsletter for single parents.

“The one thing that I’ve discovered is that motherhood necessitates invention,” Facey said. “And quite honestly, (Demiteriou) and I thought that we could develop and sell our software within six months. Two years later, we realized that the issues behind the software were a bit more involved than that.”

With a business loan from Union Bank of California, Facey began her research by talking to Superior Court judges, bar associations and the National Association of Matrimonial Lawyers. After hiring programmers to help create an initial version of the software, Facey then turned to local lawyers for input. The result was a comprehensive custody program that attorneys describe as unique in the market.

“This program hones in on ‘quality time’, which is a new concept just emerging in the courts,” said William Glavin, an attorney at Beverly Hills-based Kolodny & Anteau. “One parent normally gets the majority of a child’s time, but a large percentage of that is when a kid is sleeping or in school. The other parent often comes in just for the weekends or holidays. Obviously, these are differing aspects of parenting and the courts are beginning to recognize that. Kidmate underscores the ‘quality-time’ hours in a child’s schedule.”

Rather than a traditional marketing campaign, Lapin Agile instead has relied on word-of-mouth among family law specialists. The company first distributed the program to a short list of Los Angeles family law practitioners, who in turn passed the software on to colleagues who might be interested.

Lapin Agile’s marketing strategy also includes extensive demonstrations to bar associations and trade groups across the nation. Facey estimates that the company’s seven staff members average four presentations a day. That has raised judges’ and lawyers’ awareness of the software and landed a distribution deal with Divorcemate Inc., a Toronto-based Canadian software distributor. The distribution deal, which was signed at the end of February, was primarily responsible for the spike in sales volume this March.

Facey said that the company’s five-year goal is to gain market share, not only through growing Kidmate sales but also through new family law-based software products scheduled to launch this summer.

“Family law is a big practice, and there are legal programs out there for every type of business and money transaction but not for our kids,” Facey said. “Unfortunately, with over 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce, more and more children do not live in what is considered a traditional family environment. It’s sad, but Donna Reed is dead. That’s where we want our software to help.”