When people get a divorce, they are often seduced into the “world of lawyers,” who live in the world of the law. The law dictates…

In business planning, a boss or committee in the business, will develop a Strategic Intention for the business, a Value Proposition and Standards by which to measure the success of the business.

The traditional family law system lacks a customer focused strategic intent and value proposition that helps divorcing parties develop a plan for reaching long term family and financial goals. Therefore, parties and their attorneys must focus on developing such a plan in negotiations, by cooperating.

Inflection points should not be ignored. In mathematics, there is a concept called the inflection point, which describes the point at which a curve on a graph changes directions. Business has adopted this concept, sometimes known as the strategic inflection point, referring to when a change occurs that requires a business to change direction in order to survive. 

In prior articles, we wrote about the natural desire to prevail against perceived rivals and the potential use of game theory to understand obstacles in the current legal system as it takes families through parental separations and divorce.  We next focused on how the legal system begins to trick people into self-defeating patterns of decision making......

In prior articles, we wrote about the natural desire to prevail against perceived rivals and the potential use of game theory to understand obstacles in the current legal system as it takes families through parental separations and divorce. We next began to focus on how the legal system begins to trick people into self-defeating patterns of decision making.

“The other side wants . . .!”  In prior articles we focused on the fact that while people are rational, they can be tricked and on two of the tricks in the traditional family law legal system: legal outcomes are goals; and divorce is a zero sum game.

In Part 1 of this series, we noted that this is a trick question because it distracts people from their life goals and focuses them on legal outcomes, as though they are goals. It is also a trick question because it re-frames a non-zero sum game into a zero sum game.

True or false? People are rational and generally make good choices. Now, consider this. Can they be tricked? Yes! You might remember Monty Hall and “The Price is Right”. At end the of the show, the contestant who had won the most money was shown three doors, behind two of which were some cheap junk but behind one was a big prizemaybe a fancy car. 

Why do people do stupid things? Game theory is a branch of mathematics that analyzes how and why people make the choices that they make. Recently, a couple of authors have included game theory in the study of marriage and divorce.

One of the challenges in mediation is that parties usually come to mediation already with a dispute.  The training of lawyers and many mediators includes an assumption that the parties are in a dispute.

If You Change the Rules (and the Outcomes), You Can Change the Game: This is the Lesson Learned in Waldron and Koritzinsky’s Game Theory and the Transformation of Family Law.