“Divorce Registries” Are Changing How People Start Over (and Ask for Help)

In 2019, Olivia March Dreizen Howell got a divorce. Her ex was a musician and had a music studio in the marital home. After he moved out, the room was empty. “There were literally guitar and banjo hangers just sitting empty on the walls. [There was] his artwork, his coffee table. Everything else that was left was from my wedding registry,” shares Dreizen Howell, noting that some things had their monogrammed names on it, while others were simply not to her own personal taste. Ultimately, she says, “I didn’t want to sleep in the same sheets that we slept in.” 

At the time, Dreizen Howell worked in marketing and one of her clients was a concierge baby registry company. She looked at her home, the marital residence, and something clicked. “I thought to myself: There’s got to be a divorce registry. This is when I need new things.” 

She filed that idea away for later — she had to get through the upheaval of her life first. But Dreizen Howell will never forget the feeling of when her sister bought her a toothbrush holder for three people (herself and her two children) rather than four. She looked at it in her bathroom, and felt the world shift. 

“I was like, ‘Oh my God. I’m going to be okay. When you can change the things around you, the things around you change. It’s really as simple as that.” If only she could bottle that feeling; that representation of tangible support. She thought about it for a while, and then she started to build what would become Fresh Starts, a company she co-founded with her sister that provides registries for all different life phases, including divorce.

A divorce registry is exactly what it sounds like. Much like when a couple gets married, and they have a registry on their wedding website, a divorce registry helps support people going through a divorce who may be suddenly losing half of their income, moving to a new home, or refilling a half-empty one, all while paying for a divorce, which can cost five to six figures. 

Dreizen Howell didn’t start on the idea of building out this type of registry right away; it wasn’t until her own sister Jenny Dreizen’s engagement ended that the urgency of the idea, and the feeling that every divorce is different and requires different types of support, felt reinforced. “She had the opposite experience that I did. She left her apartment in Queens with nothing except our grandmother’s dishes. She called me and she [asked,] ‘Remember that idea for divorce registry? I don’t have anything. It’s going to cost me $10,000 just to get everything new.’” 

So in August 2021, they started Fresh Starts, a company that helps take the “thinking” out of what you need at a time when you are making a thousand consequential decisions a day. The company’s registries are all done through Amazon, for convenience, budget-friendliness, and ultimately privacy. Amazon is a safer option because registries on traditional retailer sites are public-facing, searchable, and designed to be discovered. “Set to private, the registry simply isn’t Google-able — it doesn’t exist to anyone you haven’t personally invited in. And even when someone chooses to make their registry public to share with their community or on social media, Amazon’s settings are designed so that your home address remains protected and isn’t visible to the people shopping from your list,” she says. Plus, Amazon boxes are innocuous — it doesn’t say what’s inside or where it came from. 

Every divorce is not the same, and Dreizen Howell wants to make sure that anyone who sets up a registry with Fresh Starts can do so privately and safely, without fear of their address or intentions being discovered by others. Someone may be leaving an abusive relationship, only telling people slowly and privately, or revealing what’s happening in their life on their own terms. Of course, you can still set up a registry on the company’s website without using Amazon, but that privacy is important to consider. 

Fresh Start has pre-set bundles, ranging from $99 to $250 and even $500. You can also shop by room — there’s a bundle for home offices, the living room, the kitchen, and more — if you’re in a situation like Dreizen Howell, where a room that was your ex’s domain is suddenly empty, or if you are moving into a new space and leaving almost everything behind. Additionally, you could shop by aesthetic — coastal chic, mid-century modern — or build your own from scratch, or check out their room-by-room registry checklist.

Getting divorced is expensive. Beyond hiring a lawyer (the average cost in New York State alone is $16,000) you have to file your divorce with the court (and pay a filing fee), potentially sell your marital property or negotiate a deal to buy it out, and deal with many other types of negotiations (like child support, retirement savings, etc.). The fees add up, and all the while it can take years before it’s finalized.

Millennial divorce, in particular, is proving to be hairy and costly for those who file. One woman going through divorce told Business Insider that in legal fees alone, her divorce had cost her up to $100,000, not including lost wages, child care costs, etc. Another told the publication that it had cost him $300,000 in legal fees, including selling the marital home at a loss, splitting shared retirement accounts, and more. Redditors have claimed their divorces cost anywhere from $750 to $130,000 and counting. It could be as easy as filing for divorce and spending a few hundred dollars, or as complex and lengthy as several hundred thousand dollars. One spouse can continue to keep the fight going and drain your savings or put you into debt. It’s a gnarly business.

“So many people make mistakes in their divorce, because they’re clear on what they’re running from, but not what they’re running to,” warns Hannah Hembree Bell, an Austin, Texas-based lawyer and CEO and managing attorney of Hembree Bell Law Firm. She recommends thinking of divorce in phases: The getting ready phase, middle of it, and the after, aka “welcome to your new life” phase. As you approach that latter, Bell wants you to envision yourself in the future. Where do you want to be after your divorce? Where do you want to live? What do you want to be doing? What do you want to surround yourself with? And what will be your new budget?

It’s mind-bendingly difficult to go through, and the last thing on your mind is likely the stuff that is in your house or the stuff you want to replace (or need to because they walked off with it in the divorce). That’s where something as simple as a registry comes in — and you don’t have to be going through legal separation like divorce to need one. Even if you are in a long-term partnership that’s ending, you could benefit from one, too.

When Becca Murray, a Los Angeles, California-based photographer and “accidental influencer” broke up with her partner of 13 years, it wasn’t exactly a divorce, but it felt a whole lot like one. She stayed in the home she had shared with her ex-partner, but most everything in the home was his. 

People asked how to help. “I was like, ‘I don’t know the answer to that question.’” But when she announced her breakup on TikTok (an experience she called “crazy”), Dreizen Howell and Dreizen reached out to her and told her to launch a registry. Her first thought was that she wasn’t married, it’s still majorly life-changing when you share a home and life with someone for 13 years and then have to split everything up. As she looked at her apartment, the one she used to share with her ex, she saw she had no dining table or sofa — just a desk and a fancy mirror. 

So she built a registry and launched a secondhand fund for furniture and thrifting. The next day, she woke up to $300 in her Venmo account. She knew what to buy. “All of the lamps [in my home] were gone.” The Rosebowl Flea was that day, so she went and bought a vintage lamp. 

“[It gave me] something to do with my Sunday that was just for me. Being able to buy a lamp and come home, and now I have light in my home … there are just things that seem so small, but they were so essential to my functioning as a human. All of those little things combined helped me feel like myself when I could get to that place again. It’s like they slowly got me back to level ground.” 

Dreizen Howell’s official advice is to start with the high-touch items that you use every day, like “towels, sheets, utensils, dishes, glasses, and mugs.” She had many of these items in her home; she just didn’t want to use them anymore. She donated a lot of the old stuff to a women’s shelter and started fresh. 

One thought is to write down everything that your ex took in the divorce so you know what you might need to replace. Also, what did you always want, but could never have as a form of compromise? Like all pink towels? A disco ball? An ultra-plush mattress topper or even a shag rug? Put it on the list. You can build a registry at Fresh Starts, or anywhere that makes sense to you — on a private website, Crate & Barrel, a piece of paper. Imagine yourself in the future. Who, and where, do you want to be?