‘The principal institution of the law is not trial; it is settlement out of court’ [1]
- This is the quoted first line of the paper (link below) by academics Bellucci and Zeleznikow.
A new computer program called Family Winner has been developed to assist in the negotiation process for people involved in divorces and de-facto separations. A pair of Victorian IT academics has created it: John Zeleznikow and Emilia Bellucci.
Basically the system gets parties to rank their assets in order of importance to them. The program then produces a recommendation of how to distribute the assets across the parties. The recommendation is based upon people’s own priorities.
The idea behind the program is not to replace the use of mediators and lawyers in facilitating separation, but in streamlining and speeding up the negotiation process and getting to the key issues up for negotiation.
With separating couples required to try to resolve disputes before filing with the Family Court, Professor Zeleznikow expects there will be a need for mediators.
The product is not yet generally available.
See SMH Article [2]
See the academic article [3]
[1] Ross, H. L., 1980, Settled Out of Court, Aldine
[2] Adele Horin, Divorce? Let the computer be the judge, SMH 21/09/05
[3] John Zeleznikow and Emilia Bellucci, 2005, Family Winner: Integrating Game Theory and Heuristics to Provide Negotiation Support, www.jurix.nl
