Divorce asset division

cavedave

I have read a book by Brams and Taylor about 'fair division' of assets. But this is a maths book and it doesn't say much about about the practice of negotiation in the real world. Fair division is the problem of dividing collections of goods between people in a negotiation in a way that everyone finds acceptable.

Say a couple walk into your law practice who want to separate. They want you to help in the negotiation to divide up the assets. This isn't a legal argument in the sense of going to court more a negotiation to get to a division they are both willing to take.

Does this situation happen in practice? Or is it not something lawyers deal with regularly.

How long would you expect a division of assets negotiation to take?

People have lots of stuff. Kevin Kelly estimates the average American home has ten thousand items. How do you decide what is to be important and what can be ignored?

The mathematics of fair division has a concept of 'divisible' good. Which is something like money that can be split into parts. When doing a mediation do you consider divisible goods?

This question isn't looking for legal advise, I am not in this situation. I have an interest in applied mathematics and I just want to see if the idealised process has any relevancy to the real world of people dividing up assets.

Slyderx1

This is true. A male divorcing spouse wanted in his own words ' half the wedding photos' from the wedding album. Fine said my client and took a scissors to each and every photo and snipped them in half. The moral of this story is that maths and logic and perhaps fairness are strangers in Family Law .

cavedave

Slyderx1 thats a great story. Solomon like in her wisdom

Eventually I suppose people have to get down to an agreement or else go to court. From what you describe how people get there is not at all clear cut though?