Law Commons^™

An Empirical Study Of Property Divisions At Divorce, Margaret Ryznar

Pace Law Review

Much has been written about family law and how to fairly divide property between divorcing spouses. Without a good understanding of what courts are doing in the field, however, there is no baseline for theoretical frameworks. This Article fills the void by analyzing all divorce cases involving children that were filed in one county over several months. The resulting empirical data has implications for the meaning of fairness in divorce, the role of judicial discretion, and the incentives for contracting by couples. This Article also examines the underlying law in order to explore the correlation between the family law code …

In The Shadow Of A Myth: Bargaining For Same-Sex Divorce, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores a relatively new phenomenon in family law: same-sex divorce. The Article's central claim is that parties to the first wave of same-sex divorces are not effectively bargaining against the backdrop of legal dissolution rules that would govern in the absence of an agreement. In other words, to use Robert Mnookin and Lewis Kornhauser's terminology, they are not "bargaining in the shadow of the law." Instead, the Article argues, many same-sex couples today bargain in the shadow of a myth that same-sex couples are egalitarian—that there are no vulnerable parties or power differentials in same-sex divorce.

The Article …