

Math shall set you free – How to do divorce, divestment, and death properly - amfeng
http://nautil.us/issue/13/symmetry/math-shall-set-you-freefrom-envy

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patio11
It is not obvious to me that this avoids the main problem with shotgun
clauses, which is that they violate intuitive notions of fairness in the case
where the two parties have differential access to capital.

Consider the case where two cofounders build $1 million worth of a business
prior to having a falling out. One of them has $20k in his checking account
and one has $500k of home equity. (While this sort of situation might strike
one as uncommon if one assumes that all cofounders are peers N months out of
undergrad, it is in fact quite common in the real world.) These facts are
mutually known. There's a very degenerate strategy here for the richer
cofounder: propose transferring 50% of the equity via either the shotgun
clause or "fair buy/sell", then offer a bid of $20,001.

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ColinWright
Although it doesn't appear to be the same thing, this is discussed extensively
here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7666501](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7666501)

The related article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7664261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7664261)

A related submission:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667325)

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vacri
_John likes vanilla best, while Jane prefers chocolate. The ideal split is
obviously for John to get the vanilla half and Jane the chocolate half. But if
John is the cutter, then unless he knows Jane’s preferences, that ideal split
will appear too risky to him: He could lose the entire vanilla half._

Given that the introductory commentry is about a couple in an intimate
relationship, surely by the stage you're that invested in the cake, you should
know the other person's preference. Or, crazy thought, I know, the person
doing the splitting can _talk to the other party_ about their preferences.
"Hey, I know I'm cutting the cake, but I prefer vanilla - do you have a
preference?" would solve the problem at hand in a few seconds.

It's also an example that doesn't feed into the Fair Buy-Sell algorithm (which
looks nice for the right circumstances - indivisible items where parties can
trade other items of worth (like money) and the parties are not particularly
concerned for the welfare of each other). How would you do the 'Fair Buy-Sell'
for the cake situation? "This cake is worth X to me and Y to you" means what,
exactly?

