When to Pay Money You Do Not Owe in a Divorce

From The Mid-South Divorce Guide, chapter 33, by William W. Jones
IV, a Memphis family law attorney and Rule 31 Listed Family Mediator
licensed in Tennessee and Mississippi. This guide covers Shelby, Tipton
and Fayette Counties in Tennessee and DeSoto, Tate and Tunica Counties
in Mississippi.

Questions this page answers

• Is it worth fighting over in a divorce?
• How do I decide whether to settle?
• When should I go to trial in a divorce?
• How do I keep divorce costs down?

Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is write a check for money
you do not owe.

I know how that sounds. Stay with me, because this is the single most
valuable habit of thinking I can hand you, and the clients who learn it
finish this process with more money and more of their life intact than
the clients who do not.

The arithmetic nobody does

Every disputed item in your divorce has two numbers attached to it.
What the item is worth, and what it costs to fight about it.

People only ever look at the first number.

So here is what happens. Your spouse claims the bedroom furniture,
which you say is yours because your grandmother gave it to you. You are
right. It is separate
property, it is worth about four thousand dollars, and you can prove
it.

Now the second number. Proving it means your lawyer drafts discovery, reviews the
responses, takes a deposition of your spouse, subpoenas whatever
documents exist, prepares an exhibit, and puts on proof at a hearing.
Their lawyer does the same. Call it fifteen hours of your attorney’s
time before anybody walks into a courtroom.

You just spent more than the furniture is worth to win the furniture.
And you might lose, because a judge who has heard eleven cases that day
may not be as impressed by your grandmother as you are.

That is not a reason to roll over on everything. It is a reason to
ask the second question before you commit to the fight.

The three questions

Before you dig in on anything, ask yourself these.

What is it actually worth, in dollars, today? Not
what you paid. Not what it should be worth. What a stranger would pay
for it this afternoon.

What will it cost to win it? Ask your lawyer
directly and make them give you a number. Attorney time, expert fees,
court reporter, the day off work, the second day off work when it gets
continued.

What happens to everything else while I am fighting about
this? This is the one people miss. Every fight consumes
attention, goodwill, and credibility. Spend three months at war over the
furniture and you have poisoned the negotiation on the retirement
account, which is worth two hundred times more.

Buying peace is a
legitimate purchase

There is a category of expense in every divorce that I would describe
as buying your way out of a fight, and there is nothing weak about
it.

Your spouse insists you owe them six thousand dollars for something.
You do not owe it. You could prove you do not owe it. Proving it costs
nine thousand dollars, takes four months, and keeps a person who is
currently unreasonable in your life for that entire stretch.

Write the six thousand dollar check. You did not lose. You bought a
resolution for three thousand dollars less than the alternative, you
bought back four months of your life, and you took away the leverage
your spouse was using to hold up everything else.

I have had clients pay money they clearly did not owe and describe it
later as the best financial decision of the whole case. I have also had
clients spend forty thousand dollars proving a point worth eight, and
every one of them told me afterward that they would not do it again.

The word principle is
expensive

At some point in most cases a client tells me it is not about the
money, it is about the principle.

I understand that completely and I am not going to talk you out of
your principles. But I want you to know what principles cost, because
you are the one buying.

The honest version is that principle is usually anger wearing a nicer
suit. The furniture is not really about the furniture. It is about the
fact that your spouse is taking something else from you and this is the
piece you feel like you can hold onto. That is human and it is real. It
is also a very expensive way to process a feeling, and a therapist bills
a fraction of what I do.

So when you catch yourself saying it is the principle, that is your
signal to run the three questions above. If the numbers still say fight,
then fight, and I will fight it with you. Just make sure you decided
rather than reacted.

When you should absolutely
not pay

The analysis runs the other way sometimes, and these are the
situations where I will tell you to spend the money.

Anything involving your children’s safety. There is
no cost benefit analysis on a real safety issue. None.

Anything that repeats. A one time payment is a one
time cost. A support number, a parenting schedule, a decision-making
allocation, and an alimony term are obligations that run for years.
Overpaying by two hundred dollars a month for twelve years is nearly
thirty thousand dollars, and it is worth spending real money to get
right.

Anything that sets the pattern. If your spouse
learns in month two that manufacturing a dispute makes you write a
check, you will be receiving manufactured disputes for the next decade.
Sometimes you spend money on a small fight specifically so the next nine
do not happen. That is not emotion. That is deterrence, and it is a
legitimate strategic reason to litigate something that is not worth its
face value.

Anything where the number is genuinely large. The
math changes when the asset is the retirement account or the business. A
fight that costs fifteen thousand to win two hundred thousand is not a
close question.

Anything you cannot fix later. Property division is
final. Custody can be modified. Know which kind of decision you are
making.

How to use your lawyer on
this

Ask me what it costs. Every time. Before you tell me to go do it.

A good lawyer should be able to tell you, roughly, what a given fight
costs and what your realistic chances are, and should tell you when a
fight is not worth having even though it means less work for them. If
your lawyer never talks you out of anything, you have a problem.

And then decide. It is your money and it is your life, and my job is
analysis, not advocacy for one choice over another. I will give you the
numbers and the odds and my honest read. You pick.

Just pick with a calculator in your hand instead of a knot in your
stomach.

Download the whole guide. All 35 chapters plus four blank client forms, complimentary, no email required. Download The Mid-South Divorce Guide (PDF)

Questions about your own situation? The Jones Law Firm, 5100 Poplar Ave, Suite 708, Memphis, TN 38137. Call (901) 761-5353.