Successfully Negotiating Alimony With Your Spouse

In conflicts ranging from military battles to corporate wars to divorce, there's usually a winner and a loser. In fact, we are conditioned to believe from an early age that when we come into conflict, there must be a victor who defeats another. So what do mediators mean when they say everybody wins in mediation? Is there such a thing as a win/win solution?

Most conflicts do have a win/win solution, but finding it often takes a lot of hard work, creativity and imagination. And most importantly, it takes a willingness to change the way you define winning. Let me give you an example in the divorce context when negotiating alimony with a spouse.

Divorce & Alimony

I worked with a couple that had been married for 27 years. I'll call them Joan and Jerry. They had two grown children who were both out of college. Jerry earned over $100,000 a year as an accountant. Joan earned $45,000 as a teacher. The big issue in their divorce they needed to resolve was an alimony agreement. Joan felt she was entitled to $2,000 per month in spousal support. Jerry felt she wasn't going to starve on $45,000 per year so he shouldn't have to pay alimony at all. Besides, he argued, the divorce was Joan's decision.

If you look at this conflict the way Joan and Jerry did when they started divorce mediation, there are very limited solutions to negotiate alimony successfully. Joan will feel she won only if she gets the $2,000 per month. Jerry will feel he won only if he pays nothing. In litigation, they would only achieve an alimony settlement by both of them negotiating off their stated positions, through their divorce lawyers, to an alimony figure that made them both feel as if they lost. Jerry would be paying too much. Joan wouldn't be getting enough.

Mediating an Alimony Agreement

But suppose they looked at spousal support differently. What if they were able to redefine the goals they were negotiating?

In divorce mediation, I would ask them both about other things that were important to them. Relationships with their children would be an area we would discuss. How do each of them want to be seen by their children? What kind of role models do they want to be?

I would ask them about the relationship they want to have with each other after the divorce. Is it important to them that they end the marriage with respect for each other, that they be able, to some extent, to put anger and bitterness behind them?

When discussing alimony in mediation, I would also talk to them about their financial goals and needs in the future. How and where did they each hope to live, and what would it take to make them both feel secure.

You might be asking, what's the point of all this? Jerry still has to decide if he's going to pay spousal support without being forced to by a judge, and if so, how much? That's the decision he has to make, but the reason behind these questions is to help Jerry and Joan both think beyond the alimony agreement in their divorce to what in their lives is important to them, has value to them, and that they want to hold onto after the divorce.

In mediating the alimony settlement, they may find or create value where they didn't see it before. In fact, that's just what happened. The couple came to realize that several of the things we talked about were of great value to them beyond the spousal support payments. Despite his present anger, Jerry didn’t want to start a new life filled with anger and knowing that Joan resented or even hated him for using alimony as a way to punish her.

If coming out of his divorce with a sense of self respect and the knowledge that Joan respected him was important to him, what kind of solution to the alimony issue would best enable him to get what he valued?

Mediating a Win/Win Divorce Alimony Settlement

After further discussions, and each of them consulting with their attorneys, they negotiated an alimony amount reasonably close to Joan's original request. But they both felt they had won through the mediation process. Joan won because she would have the spousal support she needed to live comfortably and with a minimum of disruption to her life. And Jerry won because he had changed what it meant to him to win. His decision to pay alimony was consistent with the way he wanted to feel about himself, with the kind of person he thought himself to be and wanted Joan and his children to think him to be.

But wait, you may be saying. Isn't the result the same? In divorce settlement terms, the answer is yes. Most of my mediation clients reach alimony settlements that are similar to ones they would reach in litigation or that a judge would decide, but the result is not the same and the difference is how each of them feels about the negotiated alimony settlement. And that makes all the difference in the world.

If you don't think the difference between mediating and litigating alimony is important, think about this statistic. Nearly 40% of people who get divorced through litigation end up back in court after the divorce because of a dispute they can't work out. Only 4% of people who mediate their divorces end up back in court.

Through mediation, both parties in a divorce feel they won something of value to them. This makes them less likely to harbor resentment that could lead to more conflicts down the road.

Learn more about the specifics of calculating alimony in our guide to alimony during divorce mediation.