Divorce Balance

Negotiation > Recovery > Enhancement

Saturday, March 19, 2005
Pendulums

• Dear Dell: The wife and I, we're getting a divorce. But we're writing this together.

Went to see a lawyer. She took things as far as she could. One final thing is an antique music chest. We bought that on our honeymoon together, in 1973. We both want that. The lawyer, she sent us to an accountant. The accountant said it appraised at $17,550 this past December.

I told the wife I'd buy it off her for $40,000 cash from my half of what they give you in the divorce settlement. Then she said she'd give me $40,000 so she could keep it. Well, we bid that up for a while. But, Dell, it's not about the money. So all the lawyering and accounting in the world won't solve our problem.

Then the lawyer, she said to us: "Go to trial. The judge, he'll decide which one of you gets the music chest and the other one will get a 'credit' for $17,550 in the divorce settlement." That's that, except we have to pay two lawyers on top of everything to fight it out for us.

The wife found your advice on the Internet. She told me to read it and I did. I studied everything, all the way back. We aren't much at marriage, but I agreed with her that you have a head on your shoulders and it isn't a sheep's head.

So we're looking together to pick your brain for something on this that might be there for us to see.

You can call us "Bob" and "June," because we don't want to use our real names and our real names are not "Bob" and "June."

• Dear Bob and June: I think it's really important to first reflect on the progress you've already made before writing to me.

Five things leap out from your eMail.

Success number one: You've found a way to write to me "together" (you'd be amazed at how many people would have insisted on each having their own, separate communication to say what you all have said here, cooperatively). Number two: You've found common ground in what I've written about divorce. Three and four: You appear receptive to expert counsel — citing the lawyer and the accountant.

Last but not least, the notion of a win/lose "fight" is something no one is eager to jump into. Good for you both!

So the fundamental problem here, it seems to me, is that the two of you have only one music chest. That's not inconsequential. But, divorce negotiations invariably benefit from boiling things down succinctly like this, as best we can.

• One music chest, divided by two people, equals a problem-plus.

But what if I could show you that you may have two music chests? or three?

A little over a decade ago, three sisters in their early sixties came to me with a single, treasured grandfather clock. Their Daddy had passed away seventeen months earlier, and every other bit of his eight-figure estate had been settled, amicably. Like clockwork (if you'll forgive the pun).

Except for the disposition of his grandfather clock, that is. Daddy hadn't been clear about which way he wanted his greatest prize to go. But each daughter was convinced that to be the one in final possession of this legacy was to hold in perpetuity tangible proof of Daddy's irrefutable love and approval.

The clock was hardly ornate or expensive, as grandfather clocks go. And the NIST-F1 Cesium Fountain Atomic Clock it was not. It typically lost five minutes a day, give or take.

Daddy's grandfather clock been crated and in storage for a year when I first met these ladies in my office. The sisters hadn't spoken in three months. Yet, as I came to know them over time, it was slowly revealed that this was in no way representative of their history. In fact, up until their father's Will was read, they had been quite close.

Self-esteem trumps sisterhood, I guess. And, just like divorce court, "the system" can exacerbate and even create conflicts when it confronts folks with limited options and hard lines for splitting stuff.

Each daughter had a standing offer on the table to buy out the other two. In 1993 dollars, those pitches worked out to approximately twice the market value of the house in which I was then living.

All offers were rejected, every time.

Intending merely to establish some comfort for what was shaping up to be a drawn out mediation, I suggested a field trip to the largest grandfather clock showroom I could find in Wayne County. Surely we'd see something close to Daddy's clock there to help me visualize things. And maybe an immersion in this environment would stir softer feelings to the surface.

We were there less than an hour when each of these detail-oriented ladies had identified "the" clock. Physically, each was in a separate place. But all were the same manufacturer, model, finish, movement — everything.

And I got the answer we needed.

Buy two more clocks.

But just to get things started.

• Then — further drawing from the funds they were willing to spend to compensate each others' interests, modify those clocks to be virtually indistinguishable from Daddy's. Age the metal. Replicate the heart scratched into the wood at the base by the middle daughter when she was three. Time each to lose five minutes a day. Obliterate serial numbers.

• Then — remove the pendulum and counterweights from the original grandfather clock. Switch them with corresponding pieces in the two new clocks. Thus, everyone has some part of Daddy's clock, and it's working. Equally important, no one has all of it.

The three daughters were delighted. In the end, they drew lots for the clocks, identified as "Larry," "Curly," and "Moe." (Why risk another fight over the arbitrary hierarchical ranking implied by "1," "2," and "3"?)

Only one of the daughters had a child, a son. But to my fascination, all three wanted me to set something up so that upon the death of the last sister, the "true" grandfather clock would then be reunited with its original pendulum and counterweights, and given to him.

As it happens, the middle daughter passed away very unexpectedly six months after the clocks were delivered. The youngest daughter passed away in 1998. Those two clocks are currently in protective storage that a Smithsonian curator would envy.

I subsequently thought back to the afternoon when these three women met with me to wrap up our mediation. Each, then, I'm certain, was convinced that she had most of the original grandfather clock. They each held my hand tightly as the middle one spoke.

"You'll out live all of us, young man. But we've agreed that whomever God calls last, you're not to tell who had the real clock. Promise?"

All three looked at me as one, and I did.

Two years ago, the last surviving daughter called me on another matter. At the close of that conversation, my decade-old promise came up.

"Do you remember, Dell, what Emma had you promise?" Emma was the middle daughter.

"I do."

"I can say what I please, you know, because the Lord has called Emma and Jean home," she continued. "Daddy would have wanted me to keep the deal his three girls made with you. I know that. But I'm not going to keep my promise for that reason — for him. I am going to keep it because it was my deal. It was my choice.

"One more thing. You know, I like the clock I have. It's still Daddy's clock. But somehow, this particular one became only his and mine.

"Maybe you already knew this when we came to meet with you, Dell. But I think each of us got something better this way than any one of us would have gotten if Daddy had given her the whole clock."

"Your father was a great man," I said.

"Thank you. I'm sorry you couldn't have met him."

"I know him by the daughters he raised."

Bob, June — you asked me for something that might be out there for you to see. I've showed you one grandfather clock and three daughters. What now of your divorce negotiation over a music chest purchased on a honeymoon?

It's "worth" $17,550 because the experts say so. You could sell it for that to someone for whom it will bring as much joy as it has apparently brought the two of you over some part of the last thirty-two years. Split the proceeds and start anew.

That is, after all, what divorce is fundamentally about.

If this "asset" is about more than the money (after all, something got you all from $17,550 to $40,000 and bigger) I might encourage you to try and figure out what's driving that value for each of you.

Then, if nothing else, don't negotiate your divorce in a way that can only serve to diminish what you so value.

—posted by Dell Deaton @12:01 PM EST 3/19/2005 [1500]

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