Divorce, Mediation, Wisdom, Humor, and the Comics

This is my 200th blog! A good way to end the year. America has a long tradition of humor in disguise that is imparting sound advice and wisdom. From before Will Rodgers to Jon Stewart there have been commentators about American life. I would also include the comics in the newspaper. For some reason, I had stopped reading the comics but have recently started reading them first every day. I am impressed how they depict the universality of our experiences and of course for me the issues of marriage, divorce, and mediation. A recent example which caught my eye was the November 30, 2010 “Sally Forth” comic strip by Francesco Marciuliano. See it above. Ted thinks the broken Christmas ornament is a symbol that their marriage is broken and Sally reassures him that it may only mean the other ornaments in the box are broken. It shows how in a marriage things can be viewed as a crisis or just an accident. As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com WM (200) 12/29/10

Divorce Automat

When I was growing up and visited New York City, we often ate at the Horn and Hardart Automat. My favorite dish was their macaroni and cheese. I never have had better. I also remember buying milk and not knowing I was suppose to put a glass under the ornate silver spout. I miss the automat and was thrilled to see a part of it at the Smithsonian. What does this have to do with mediation? Not too much but I wanted to use a picture of the automat. Although, I think many divorcing couples would like to have a Divorce Automat. They would like to put their money in the slot, open the door, and pull out the answers to their issues. Some computer programs can do a little of this but it takes a little more work on the part of the couple. More likely, they will buy a few options, taste them, and decide which one they like the best. As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com WM (199) 12/22/10

Study of Outcomes of Mediated vs. Adversary Divorce

Believe it or not, as far as I know, we conducted the first statistically significant study of financial outcomes in divorces. We compared results of both mediated and adversarial cases. An article about the study appeared in The New York Times and complete results were published in Mediation Quarterly. You can see the details of our study at our web site at http://tiny.cc/cdmstudy.
Some of the things the study found were differences in percentage of family income women received, in percentage of liabilities women received, in the likelihood of receiving alimony or in the amount of alimony obtained in mediated versus adversarial divorces. Similar percentages of couples, 62% in both mediated and adversary divorces, selected joint legal/wife physical as the most popular choice of custody arrangement and identical numbers of days per month were spent by children with father, 9.5, and mother 20.5. It also found that mediated divorces took less time than adversarial divorces and were significantly less likely to result in post-judgment modification, thus sparing couples and families added emotional and financial costs.
As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com WM (198) 12/15/10

Investing in Divorce

Just when you think there is nothing new with divorce, something new comes along. I was fascinated with the article in the December 4, 2010 New York Times by Binyamin Applebaum entitled “ Taking Sides in a Divorce, Chasing Profit.” See entire article at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/business/05divorce.html
Balance Point Divorce Funding, a new Beverly Hills lender offers to cover the cost of breaking up — paying a lawyer, searching for hidden assets, maintaining a lifestyle — in exchange for a share of the winnings. The article say, “Stacey Napp, a lawyer by training who has spent her career in finance, founded Balance Point last year with money from her own divorce. Since then, she has provided more than $2 million to 10 women seeking divorces. She says she is helping to ensure both sides can defend their interests.” Personally, I believe that if the parties looked at the bottom line, they would each get a lot more money if they mediated. As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com WM (197) 12/7/10

Divorce and Fairness

In a mediation couples usually feel that the standard of resolving a dispute is usually “fairness.” Unfortunately, like beauty fairness is in the eyes of the beholder. The standard that I prefer as a mediator is “acceptable.” Contemplation of “fairness” has lead me to determine what is the popular view of “fairness.” Wikipedia gives a good overview of “fair division” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_division. It says in part: “Fair division, also known as the cake cutting problem, is the problem of dividing a resource in such a way that all recipients believe that they have received a fair amount. The problem is easier when recipients have different measures of value of the parts of the resource: in the "cake cutting" version, one recipient may like marzipan, another prefers cherries, and so on—then, and only then, the n recipients may get even more than what would be one n-th of the value of the "cake" for each of them. On the other hand, the presence of different measures opens a vast potential for many challenging questions and directions of further research. There are a number of variants of the problem. The definition of 'fair' may simply mean that they get at least their fair proportion, or harder requirements like envy-freeness may also need to be satisfied. The theoretical algorithms mainly deal with goods that can be divided without losing value. The division of indivisible goods, as in for instance a divorce, is a major practical problem. Chore division is a variant where the goods are undesirable. Fair division is often used to refer to just the simplest variant. That version is referred to here as proportional division or simple fair division.” I wonder if the “cake cutting problem” actually begins at the wedding. More about the "cake cutdtting problem" as a tool in medidation in my March 21, 2008 blog on Divorce Proverbs and Aphorisms at
http://centerfordivorcemediation.blogspot.com/2008/03/divorce-proverbs-and-aphorisms.html. As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com WM (196) 12/1/10