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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/3KidsInTheTrenchCoat on 2025-01-23 19:14:47+00:00.

*FAIR WARNING – CONTAINS MATH CONCEPTS*

So, this is not my story, but I enjoyed it all the same. I work with/am related to various lawyers, so I hear and deal with a lot of legal stories. Most are boring, especially the number stuff, but this one I can appreciate. Many lawyers are shockingly not great with detailed math and breaking down complicated numbers, this story however, is from one lawyer who specializes in it. 

To try and lay the story out simply… This is a divorce case. Ours is Spouse A, the opposing counsel with the bad math skills has Spouse B. Spouse A had a house before the marriage, and during the marriage they together paid down the mortgage. Because of this, Spouse B is legally entitled to a portion of the propriety value. Rather than sell, Spouse A wants to keep living in the house. To do this, Spouse A needs to pay Spouse B to buy out their portion. Pretty common. 

To calculate the payment offer, you take the value of the house at the start vs the value of the house now, and the increased value of the growth during the marriage. Spouse A’s lawyer (Lawyer A) wanted things settled, not draw it all out, and save both spouses thousands of dollars by not having to cover a lot of attorney fees, expert costs, a new appraisal, etc. Lawyer A was being very generous to Spouse B in her calculations. The starting number is a set, specific, undebatable number in tax value. It’s not an option to use anything else, and the other lawyer (Lawyer B) isn’t taking issue with that part, he couldn’t even if he wanted to.

The second part of the valuation has options. Lawyer A used the same source, the tax value, not the fair market value (like you would see on Zillow). This was a higher current valuation of the property compared to using the fair market value, meaning the payout for Spouse B was much higher and would give them the most money. No other valuation would get Spouse B more money. Spouse B has an attorney who’s not good with numbers. He tells Lawyer A the valuation wasn’t fairly calculated. He doesn’t want tax value to be used, he wants the fair market value, like what would be on Zillow. He accuses Lawyer A of trying to cheat his client out of money! He wrote it in the most condescending way, as if lawyer A is both a cheat and too dumb to do the math. He sarcastically challenged her that she would never use his first-choice price, the Zillow price. However, Lawyer A is more than happy to comply to this request. So, she reruns the numbers using the Zillow price. This new number not only gives his client, Spouse B, less money, it is half of the original valuation.

For anyone thinking this isn’t fair to Spouse B, that they are being screwed over because their lawyer is stupid, don’t worry. After schooling the lawyer and giving the new breakdown in numbers, I’m sure he will want to go back to the original plan. Spouse B isn’t going to lose out because her lawyer can’t do math. But it is fun to imagine the lawyer’s face when he sees the halved valuation using his preferred source.

 *Different states have different rules/procedures, this is how it was done in that particular state.