The Range of Reasonable Outcomes, and why it settles cases.
← Back to the calculatorA key point (perhaps the most important): in California, each party will get about 50% of the assets and debts. The question is 50% of what? That is where the disputes live. So, what the program does is tell you what happens if you win every disputed issue and what happens if you lose every disputed issue. That will give you the Range of Reasonable Outcomes — from “I lost every issue” to “I won every issue.” Inside that range is where the case should resolve (sometimes at the midpoint and sometimes to one side or the other a little bit).
Any offer that is within the Range of Reasonable Outcomes should be considered seriously. Any offer you make should be within the Range of Reasonable Outcomes (if you are serious about settling your case). You don’t have to be serious about settling your case. You can litigate endlessly, but in my experience, most people do not want to do that. They want to be done and they want it to be fair. This gives you the tool to calculate the Range of settlement options.
It also gives you a litigation tool. A Divy Split worksheet is both a settlement tool (where it is most valuable in helping you understand differences in your opinions) and a litigation tool (by printing only your positions and proposing a division, you can bring the Divy Split printout to court as a summary of your positions at trial). I urge people, after being a divorce lawyer since 2008, to use the tool to settle. Keep your money to send your own children to Berkeley, not mine.
This is important. The only people proposing numbers are the parties themselves. A thinks the house is worth $850,000. B thinks it is worth $750,000. That is a $100,000 difference. Because family law requires a 50% split, that means, in real dollars, a $50,000 payment if one side keeps it. You can sell it to get the real value, but if you do, you will lose 6% in the transaction (about $50,000). So, if A is right, and they agree to sell, the total net is $50,000 less than the value after paying everyone. And then there are the lawyers getting their fees too. The cost of sale of an $850,000 house may be $50,000 for realtors and $25,000 for lawyers. Now, that $100,000 difference may net $25,000 in real dollars divided by 2. Each side gets $12,500. And THAT is why the program exists. Save your money and save your stress by knowing what the real differences are in your values. It is a very common circumstance that realtors and appraisers differ drastically on opinions of value. And it is almost always the sucker bet to let your lawyer take it to trial. If you win, what do you win? Big fees, months of time passing, and a few dollars difference in your pocket.
Negotiation theory calls these transaction costs: the honest comparison is never “my number vs. their number” — it is “the width of the range vs. what it costs to fight across it.” California adds one more twist: under Family Code §§ 2030–2032, courts can order the higher-earning spouse to contribute to the other side’s attorney’s fees so both sides can litigate — which means the expensive fight can be partly funded by the very estate being divided. The calculator’s fee overlay lets each side enter their own estimate of the cost to fight through trial and see it next to the width of the range. Divy Split never computes fees into the division and never prints them on the worksheet — the numbers are yours, shown so the comparison is visible before the money is spent.
Add each asset and debt, say whose it is (community or separate), and award it to whoever should keep it — or state a preference and let Divy Split balance. Values come from your financial disclosures (FL-142): enter what you can verify. Tie mortgages and car loans to their asset; whoever keeps the asset normally carries its debt.
Any value field can hold both positions: click “Sides disagree?”, enter what each side says, and pick which number to work with for now. Or import each side’s disclosure (Pro) — lines that match an item already on the worksheet are recorded as that side’s number on it, and every difference is priced automatically by how much it moves the equalizing payment.
The panel shows what is already agreed, each disputed item’s effect on the payment, and the Range of Reasonable Outcomes: the payment if every disputed number resolves one side’s way, the other side’s way, and the midpoint. The equalizing payment is always half the gap between the two net positions — the most common mistake in lay division math is doubling it.
Printing always produces the division worksheet: categorized sections with subtotals, both sides’ numbers where they differ, To-each-party columns, separate-property and reimbursement breakouts (Watts, Epstein, § 2640, Moore/Marsden), and the equalizing-payment summary. Use it as the one page everyone in the room looks at — or print one side’s positions as a summary for court.
San Luis Obispo County has long had a mandatory local form — the “Fredman form” (FL001, named for a now-retired judge) — that put both parties’ contentions about every item of property on one schedule: each side’s position on character, possession, and value, item by item, with the court’s disposition alongside. It was designed to force a meaningful meet-and-confer, and it is a remarkable piece of court craft that almost nobody uses anymore. Divy Split is that idea, computed: both sides’ positions on every item in one place — plus what the form could never do by hand: price each disagreement, compute the range, and show what the fight is actually worth.
The creator holds a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from UC Berkeley. He wrote a book, Better Divorce: A Handbook for Getting Through the Most Difficult Time In Your Life, about how to think about your divorce, the most expensive legal issue most people will ever deal with in their lives. It’s a $35 investment, about one-tenth of one hour with a low-priced family lawyer, and will cost about 20 hours of your time. The calculators here are based on the approaches in the book. You don’t need to read the book to use the calculators, but the explanations and research-backed approaches to negotiation and settlement are all set forth in detail there.