Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions During Divorce
- 1 day ago
- 9 min read
How conflict, perceived threat and emotion can influence even highly capable decision makers, and why conflict literacy matters when making financial, legal and parenting decisions during divorce.
I once worked with a senior financial executive who had spent his career making decisions involving enormous amounts of money. He understood risk, projections, resource allocation, cost-benefit analysis and, perhaps most importantly, when continued investment stopped making financial sense.
Then he found himself in a divorce.
By the time we began working together, he had spent close to $250,000 in legal fees. He had moved out of the marital home while his wife and children remained there, and he was carrying much of the expense of that home while maintaining a second household of his own. The financial pressure was significant, but none of this was lost on him. He knew exactly what he was spending. In fact, he could probably have modeled the long-term financial impact better than most people sitting around the table.
Yet the money kept going out the door.
I remember thinking about the contradiction because I see versions of it all the time in my work. How does someone who spends his professional life evaluating financial risk find himself making decisions in his own life that he would almost certainly question if they were presented to him in a boardroom?
The answer, of course, was that he wasn't sitting in a boardroom.
These were his children.
He believed his relationship with them was being threatened, and that changed everything about the way he experienced the decisions in front of him.
This is one of the things I find most fascinating about conflict. We tend to think of good decision making as a fairly stable characteristic. Someone is rational. Someone is analytical. Someone "makes good decisions." But decision making doesn't happen independently of the conditions surrounding it, and divorce creates some extraordinarily difficult conditions in which to think clearly.
There is an enormous difference between evaluating risk and feeling at risk.
How Does Conflict Affect Decision Making During Divorce?
Conflict can change the way we interpret information, assess risk, consider alternatives and anticipate consequences. When people perceive something important to them as being threatened, decisions that appear financial, legal or practical on the surface can become connected to much deeper concerns about safety, identity, fairness, control or loss.
Most of us are pretty good at evaluating someone else's conflict. Give us enough distance from a problem and we can see options, identify tradeoffs and recognize when someone may be spending far more energy or money pursuing something than the likely outcome could ever justify.
Put our children, financial security, home, identity or future into that same equation and our perspective can change rather quickly.
This isn't a question of intelligence. The executive I described didn't suddenly forget how money worked. What changed was what the money represented.
Another $25,000 in legal fees wasn't simply another $25,000. In his mind, continuing to spend meant continuing to fight for his relationship with his children. Stopping could mean giving up.
Once those two things became connected, a financial decision became an emotional and identity-based decision as well.
That distinction matters because telling someone, "You're spending too much money on this," isn't particularly useful when the person believes what you are really asking them to do is stop fighting for their children.
Conflict-informed work requires us to become curious about the behavior before we try to change it. What does continuing mean to this person? What would stopping mean? What do they believe is being threatened? What are they trying to protect?
When we understand those answers, behavior that initially looks irrational often begins to make considerably more sense. That doesn't mean the behavior is productive.
Understanding why someone is making a decision isn't the same thing as endorsing the decision. But it gives us somewhere much more useful to begin.
When the Decision Stops Being About the Decision
One of the more interesting things about conflict is that people can begin by trying to solve one problem and, without realizing it, end up trying to solve something entirely different.
A client begins by asking whether a settlement proposal meets their needs. Several months into a contentious divorce, the question becomes why they should agree to anything when their spouse has behaved so badly.
A parent begins by trying to determine what schedule will work best for the children. Eventually, the conversation becomes about why they are always the parent expected to compromise.
Someone begins by asking what an asset is worth. After thousands of dollars in professional fees, the issue becomes making sure the other person doesn't "get away with it."
The original issue is still sitting there, but conflict has attached something else to it: fairness, vindication, recognition, safety, control or sometimes simply the need for someone to acknowledge that what happened wasn't okay.
These aren't trivial needs. They can be enormously important to the person experiencing them. The problem is that a legal or financial settlement may be a very expensive, and often very ineffective, place to try to satisfy them.
I sometimes ask clients a deceptively simple question:
What are you hoping this gets you? Not simply, "What do you want?" What will getting what you want actually give you?
Those two questions can produce remarkably different answers.
"I want the house" may become, "I need to know my children are going to feel stable."
"I won't accept that settlement" may become, "I don't want her to walk away believing what she did was okay."
"I want equal time with my children" may become, "I'm terrified I'm going to become a visitor in my children's lives."
Now we are somewhere different.
We haven't solved the legal issue, nor should a divorce coach be attempting to do that. But we have begun separating the decision that needs to be made from everything the decision has come to represent.
And that separation can be incredibly important to better decision-making during divorce.
Why Does Conflict Change How We Interpret Information?
Information doesn't arrive in a vacuum during divorce. It arrives through the history of the relationship, which means trust, resentment, fear and prior patterns can influence how even objectively useful information is received.
Anyone who has spent much time working with conflict has probably seen this happen: an idea seems perfectly reasonable until the other person proposes it.
I've watched people consider an option and then reject essentially the same option days later when it comes from their spouse. From the outside, that can look ridiculous. From inside the conflict, it may make perfect sense.
If I no longer trust you, I don't simply evaluate your proposal. I evaluate why you made it.
If I believe you have manipulated me before, your sudden willingness to compromise may actually increase my suspicion.
If I have spent years feeling that I was the one who always gave in, agreeing to a perfectly reasonable request may feel like repeating a pattern I have finally decided to stop.
The information hasn't changed. The context in which I receive it has. So instead of asking, "Does this work for me?" I may find myself asking, "Why do they want me to agree to this?"
That shift is subtle, but it can have enormous consequences for decision making.
It is also why simply giving people more information doesn't always resolve conflict. Sometimes they already have the information. What they need is enough distance from the conflict to evaluate the information differently.
When Divorce Conflict Becomes Financially Expensive
Conflict can become financially expensive when the goal quietly shifts from solving the problem to proving a point, obtaining vindication or avoiding the feeling of having "lost." Past investments of time, money and emotional energy can make changing direction even more difficult.
We've already spent $100,000. We've already taken depositions. We've already hired experts. We've already been fighting about this for eighteen months. Surely we can't stop now.
Anyone with a business or financial background knows the concept of sunk cost. Money already spent should not determine whether the next dollar is wisely spent.
Knowing that intellectually and applying it to your own divorce are two very different things.
Because stopping doesn't always feel like a financial decision.
It can feel like admitting you were wrong. It can feel like the other person won. It can feel as though everything you have spent, endured and fought for was meaningless.
And so people continue.
Sometimes continuing is necessary. There are cases in which litigation is unavoidable and circumstances where protecting a child, enforcing a legal right or obtaining necessary information requires significant resources.
Conflict-informed divorce practice isn't about reflexively telling people to settle. It is about making sure the decision to continue is still a decision.
At some point, it may be worth asking: If I were making this decision today, knowing what I know now but without considering everything I have already spent, would I still choose this path?
That can be a difficult question.
It can also be an incredibly clarifying one.
Can Being Highly Intelligent Actually Make Conflict Harder?
Intelligence can be an extraordinary asset in divorce, but it can also make us remarkably effective at defending a position once we have become emotionally invested in it.
Smart people are often very good at making arguments.
Give an intelligent person a position and they can find evidence to support it, identify weaknesses in the opposing position, anticipate counterarguments and construct a remarkably persuasive explanation for why their decision makes perfect sense.
That ability serves people very well professionally.
In conflict, it can occasionally work against us.
Because once we have made a decision emotionally, our intelligence can go to work defending it.
We research. We gather evidence. We replay conversations. We explain our reasoning to friends, attorneys and anyone else willing to listen. Each retelling makes the position a little more coherent and sometimes a little more entrenched.
Before long, we aren't necessarily using our intelligence to evaluate the decision.
We are using it to build the case for a decision we may have already made.
That isn't stupidity. It's human behavior.
And smart people are every bit as human as everyone else.
What Is Conflict Literacy and Why Does It Matter in Divorce?
Conflict literacy is the ability to recognize how conflict, perceived threat, emotion and relationship dynamics can influence the way we interpret information, evaluate options and make decisions.
We talk a great deal about the importance of financial literacy during divorce, and for good reason. People need to understand what they own, what they owe, what different settlement structures mean and what their financial life may realistically look like after divorce.
They also need legal literacy. They need good legal advice and enough
understanding of the divorce process to make informed choices about their rights, responsibilities and available options.
But there is another kind of literacy that matters as well.
Conflict literacy.
➡️ Can I recognize when fear is changing the way I evaluate risk?
➡️ Can I distinguish between what I actually need and the particular strategy I have chosen to get it?
➡️ Can I recognize when a position has become connected to my identity or my need to be right?
➡️ Can I evaluate an option on its merits even when I dislike or distrust the person who proposed it?
➡️ Can I recognize when continuing the fight is moving me toward my desired outcome and when the fight itself has become the outcome?
Financial literacy helps us understand the numbers. Legal literacy helps us understand the legal landscape. Conflict literacy helps us understand what may be happening inside the decision maker.
All three matter.
How Can a Divorce Coach Help With Decision Making During Divorce?
A conflict-informed divorce coach helps clients examine the factors influencing their decisions, clarify what they are actually trying to accomplish and evaluate options without taking over the decision itself.
That distinction is important.
A divorce coach isn't there to tell the financial executive whether another $25,000 in legal fees is worth spending. His attorney needs to advise him about legal strategy and likely outcomes. His financial professional can help him understand the economic impact.
The coaching conversation is different.
What are you actually trying to accomplish? Is the strategy you are pursuing moving you toward that outcome? What are you afraid will happen if you change course? What information would help you evaluate this differently? What is within your control?
And perhaps, for someone who spends his professional life making financial decisions for other people: If this were a business problem instead of your divorce, what would you be telling yourself right now?
That isn't advice.
It's perspective.
And sometimes perspective is exactly what gets lost when we are standing in the middle of our own conflict. The goal isn't to remove emotion from divorce. I don't believe that's possible, and I'm not convinced it would be desirable. Fear, anger, grief and uncertainty tell us something about what matters to us.
The work is learning how to listen to those emotions without automatically handing them the decision making authority. Because being smart doesn't make any of us immune to conflict. Sometimes it simply makes us better at explaining why the thing we desperately want to do is completely rational.
And sometimes the smartest thing we can do is become curious enough to wonder whether it actually is.
You Don't Have to Navigate the Conflict Alone
Making informed decisions during divorce isn't simply about having the right information. Sometimes it also means having a professional who can help you slow things down, recognize what may be influencing your thinking, clarify what matters most and prepare to make decisions that are truly your own.
A trained divorce coach can provide that space while working alongside, not replacing, the legal, financial and mental health professionals who may already be part of your divorce process.
Navigating divorce and looking for support? Find a trained divorce coach through the DCA® Divorce Coach Locator.
Interested in learning how to support people navigating divorce in this conflict-informed way? Learn more about Divorce Coaches Academy® training and how we prepare professionals to help clients understand conflict, strengthen decision-making and move through divorce with greater clarity and intention.
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