Fair Is a Dangerous Word

One of the most common phrases uttered by divorcing people is:

That sounds reasonable. Who could argue with fair?

Although fairness sounds like a reasonable goal in divorce, determining what is fair can breed some of the deepest acrimony.

Because fairness is rarely just math. It is subjective and personal.

One spouse may be thinking about who earned most of the money. The other may be thinking about who took on the bulk of the childcare and domestic labor. One remembers working sixty-hour weeks. The other remembers carrying the household while the wage-earner sighs about the toll employment took on their body.

One remembers an inheritance; the other spouse says, "Your parents meant that for us and you know it." One is thinking about the last three months. The other is thinking about the last twenty years.

You get the idea here: what is fair depends on the lens you look through.

There Is More Than One Ledger

By the time a marriage ends, most couples are keeping more than a financial accounting.

There is the visible ledger: the house, the cars, the bank accounts, the retirement accounts, the debts, the furniture and the monthly expenses.

Then there is another, less concrete ledger.

These invisible entries reflect some of the most influential experiences of the marriage.

An extra few thousand dollars may not repair a betrayal.

And a divorce agreement is poorly equipped to deliver a moral verdict on the marriage.

Fairness Can Become a Moving Target

When two spouses disagree about an outcome, there is an important difference between asking, "What are some arrangements we could both live with?" and asking, "What is the perfectly fair outcome?"

The first question invites possibilities. The second can become an endless search for a single answer that may not exist.

Every proposed solution can be measured against an internal standard the other spouse cannot see. And because the standard itself may be built from years of different experiences, there may be no number capable of satisfying it.

This is how a disagreement about something relatively small can become enormous.

At that point, the fight is rarely about the thing being divided.

Agreement Does Not Require Identical Feelings

One of the peculiar things about settlement is that two people can agree to exactly the same terms for completely different reasons.

One may think:

The other may think:

Those are not the same conclusion.

They don't have to be.

Agreement does not require both spouses to experience the outcome in the same way. What matters is whether the outcome is acceptable enough to become a workable option.

That distinction matters.

Divorce inevitably involves change, and often considerable loss. An agreement does not erase those losses or guarantee that every part of the outcome will feel satisfying.

Sometimes the useful question isn't whether an outcome feels good, or even perfectly fair. It is whether both people can knowingly accept it and move forward.

Getting on the same page can be messy work—the kind that gets your fingernails dirty.

You might be thinking, "If we could get on the same page as a couple, we might not be getting a divorce. So how are we supposed to do that now?"

Because divorce is a very different context than marriage.

In a marriage, we generally don't imagine life beyond the relationship. It's till death do us part. We make decisions with the expectation that we'll continue making them together, year after year. And every disagreement can carry the weight of all the disagreements that came before it.

Divorce changes that equation.

For the first time, both people are looking toward separate futures. Decisions are no longer necessarily burdened by the prospect of "you again?" Choices take on a different meaning because the life they're meant to serve is changing.

And that can change the process itself. The way people communicate. The way they negotiate. Even the way they hear one another.

Be Specific

When the word fair begins dominating a discussion, it can help to replace the abstraction with something concrete.

Specific proposals can be discussed.

I have found that when you ask a spouse struggling with the idea of fairness to stop for a moment and make a concrete request—What would you actually like to see happen?—something interesting often occurs.

They slow down. And what eventually comes out is frequently far more reasonable than the argument that preceded it.

Negotiation often stalls when each person becomes more invested in resisting the other's position than explaining their own.

You Don't Have to Settle the Marriage

A divorce necessarily resolves practical questions created by the end of a marriage.

It rarely, if ever, resolves the years of pain in the marriage itself.

You may leave the process believing you gave more than you received. Your spouse may believe exactly the same thing. It's a paradox that can make the math meaningless.

You may never agree about who caused what, who sacrificed more, or what should have happened differently.

And perhaps a divorce simply is not the time or place for that.

A healthy divorce may not be therapeutic, but neither is it an instrument for retribution.

What Makes an Agreement Workable?

The goal does not have to be an ending in which both people walk away believing perfect justice was done. That ending may not exist.

A more useful measure may be what the agreement leaves intact: financial resources, dignity, the ability to parent together, time, emotional energy, and enough goodwill to finish what still needs finishing.

Of course, a workable agreement must also be informed and voluntary. Acceptance born of intimidation, coercion, or a lack of essential information is not the kind of agreement we are talking about.

At Go Divorce Clinic, we work from a simple premise: in the end, the decisions remain yours.

Those choices belong to the two people who actually lived the marriage.