Inadequate financial and material assets can cause protracted conflict in divorce negotiations. When two households are being created from one and there is simply not enough to go around, spouses tend to get focused on slicing the financial pie, often overlooking other kinds of trade-offs, such as holding the house as tenants-in-common or deferring the split of the pension until retirement.

The situation is more acute for divorced mothers whose asset worth, according to most studies, goes down dramatically after the divorce. For divorcing fathers, negotiations are very difficult because most of the cash will have to be picked out of their pockets.

Divorcing spouses are plagued with self doubts: Do I have any worth as a marriage partner? Am I a loveable person? Am I a competent parent? What will divorce do to the children?

Negotiations can bog down as each spouse attempts to prove that he or she is a competent person and a fit parent. Vulnerable spouses who have low self esteem like to take lofty and abstract negotiating positions. For example, a mother may derogate her husband's obligations as a father, while at the same time forgetting that her unrealistic financial demands reflect something other than deep maternal concern.

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