7 deadly sins: A framework for family law

"What's in the box?" a fractured Detective David Mills howls, unmoored by the grotesque reality he's forced to confront. "Become vengeance, David. Become... Wrath," John Doe replies.

Watching David Fincher's "Se7en" (1995) creates a desperate paralysis and hope--that while the seemingly inevitable unfolds, Mills will take the righteous path. That familiar feeling returned while listening to James Kimmel Jr., author of "The Science of Revenge: Understanding the World's Deadliest Addiction--And How to Overcome It," as he described coming frighteningly close to committing a mass shooting--and his 'addiction' to revenge.

Kimmel posits that revenge is not only the driving force behind most acts of violence, but an addiction--in part due to the massive dopaminergic loop it fuels. In a presentation to hundreds of family law attorneys at the AAML Nor Cal 49th Symposium, images of the brain were plastered across screens, reward pathways lighting up in response to acts of revenge.

It got me and Catherine Thompson, a California-based family law attorney attending the symposium thinking, how broad is addiction in family law proceedings? Not just revenge, but are all seven deadly sins addictions? And more than that: what if the arena of divorce proceedings is itself structurally designed to feed them? And if so--what would it look like to design something that didn't?

The sins are already in the room

Originating in the 4th century from the Christians' and Greeks' "eight evil thoughts," Evagrius Ponticus described these thoughts as an attack on the mind--observing that the more these thoughts are fed, the more they consume, ultimately leading to a state of possession.

In divorce proceedings, family law attorneys are surrounded by sins on all sides. Envy and lifestyle comparison that hinders settlement. Pride and the perceived threat of losing, leading to drawn-out litigation that reduces the funds available to both parties. Greed--the hoarding and hiding of assets, sometimes years before separation begins. And sloth, much misunderstood: not laziness, but the extreme burnout and overwhelm of a client who won't engage, won't respond, won't make decisions--paralyzed not by indifference but by the weight of it all.

Lust (with links to sex addiction) and wrath (revenge) are perhaps the most common catalysts for the breakdown itself. 

Addiction is a chronic brain disease characterized by compulsive seeking and use of stimulus despite harmful consequences. Diagnostic frameworks often refer to the three C's. Consequences--continuing to repeat the behavior even when it is causing harm; control loss, including the inability to limit the behavior once started, and compulsion where the rational mind loses the ability to say no.

To what extent are the seven deadly sins addictions? Kimmel's own work suggests that these patterns may connect not as independent addictions, but through the experience of grievance, a neurobiological trigger that activates revenge desires and can become compulsive.

As family law practitioners know too well, divorce itself triggers this experience of victimization--even when dysfunctional patterns exist long before separation.

The deeper addiction: trauma bonds and coercive control

Trauma bonds are asymmetric power relationships where an emotional connection forms between abuser and victim. Due to the cycle of hurt, abuse and soothing, victims are left confused--often unable to recognize unhealthy patterns. Research has found that trauma bonds engage in the same dopamine loop as other addictions: initial abuse followed by love bombing creates a dependency on the cycle itself.

This pattern--variable ratio reinforcement--is the same mechanism behind gambling. A behavior is reinforced after an unpredictable number of inputs, producing resistance to extinction and higher response rates. It helps explain why relationships that appear so obviously unhealthy from the outside can be so extraordinarily difficult to leave.

Importantly, some researchers argue that abusers intentionally establish these bonds--consciously or otherwise. University of Cambridge researcher Mags Lesiak found a "distinct perpetrator profile" and concluded that "domestic abuse isn't about victim pathology, but perpetrator strategy." Whatever the framing, understanding trauma bonds as addiction is not about excusing behaviour--it's about understanding the complex architecture of control, and helping everyone caught within it find a way out.

The system that feeds the fire

Kimmel's framework is critical in broadening the understanding of addiction and how it manifests. And he proposes scientific solutions grounded in forgiveness as an antidote. Neurologically, when you forgive, the pain network and craving and reward cycle are shut down. 

To what extent does the current divorce system exacerbate the stimulus and compulsive retaliation? 

"Family law clients share children, finances, history, and in many cases ongoing proximity. The relationship often cannot be fully severed--it must be transformed," Thompson observes. "Yet the adversarial legal system is structurally designed to reward exactly the kind of black-and-white thinking that is the hallmark of addiction: winners and losers, sides and positions, all-or-nothing outcomes."

In short, the divorce arena can pour gasoline on the grievances the dissolution should be seeking to heal. Every disputed fact becomes a battleground. Every document a weapon. This is what practitioners mean when they talk about cases that take on a life of their own--where the litigation itself is perpetuated, long after any rational calculation of cost or outcome would have ended it. 

Shepherds through a different kind of detox

Understanding the divorce process as not just a remedy for an unhealthy relationship but a potential crucible for igniting its worst features means practitioners cannot simply guide clients through the mechanics of litigation. They must tailor their approach to the emotional architecture of each client's relationship.

"We are shepherds," Thompson says. "We take clients from one understanding of their intimate partnerships and themselves to another. 

In practice, that means resourcing clients with therapeutic frameworks for understanding their relational dynamics--encouraging them to seek support during and after dissolution, holding space for emotional evolution, and recognizing when litigation is exacerbating rather than resolving the underlying bond. "Litigation solutions should be designed not to encourage unhealthy attachments, but to transform them to functional ones," Thompson notes. "It is incumbent on both practitioners and clients to become aware of our brains' unconscious goals and reclaim sovereignty over them--to interrupt the addictive feedback loop."

The goal, then, is to find common ground. Which raises a practical question: where does that common ground actually come from?

Fact chaos: the accelerant

Discovery is becoming increasingly weaponized in divorce. Clients chasing the smoking gun within documents. Overwhelming the other party in mountains of evidence. Seeking to harm or 'win' points over the other party with 'gotcha' evidence.

Fact chaos keeps emotionally distraught clients buried in the past and coercive-controlling partners in power. It keeps energy focused on defining reality rather than healing it. Further, high-conflict parties obtain more surface area to contest, and more ambiguity to exploit. Ultimately, it fuels ongoing litigation, diminishing the very asset pool the parties are contesting. 

Reducing fact chaos, then, is not merely an administrative goal. In the context of addictive litigation dynamics, it is a clinical one.

What lowers the temperature

AI can both exacerbate and alleviate the problem. Clients are increasingly coming to practitioners with AI-generated views based on an incomplete or inaccurate understanding of the application of the law. This is not only playing out in family law but across the board, with HR professionals observing an increase in employee complaints, and AI-generated questions among the many issues that plagued the February 2025 California Bar Exam. 

There are technical limitations that create hallucination risks in general AI tools. Given the breadth of tasks that they need to undertake and the processing required--the tools summarize and compress information, which means they can miss critical details. These risks can aggravate chaos in a case.

There are new purpose-built tools emerging specifically to solve these challenges, using AI to extract and verify the facts from evidentiary documents. They reduce the potency of ambiguity, making grounded analysis both cheaper and unavoidable. 

"I'm excited about where AI can take the legal field," Thompson says, "not just because it will save clients money and attorneys time sorting through years of clients' lives on paper, but because it has the potential to revolutionise how intimate disputes are litigated across the board."

Removing ambiguity removes fuel for grievances. When parties can more efficiently arrive at the same organized, verifiable record of events--when the facts are no longer a battleground--the adversarial temperature drops. Not because the conflict disappears, but because one of its primary accelerants has been removed. 

According to Thompson, "Over time, litigation could evolve from an adversarial framework to a cooperative one. AI could be used to establish factual baselines. Rather than requiring litigants to prove every fact of their dissolution, they could focus on the most important ambiguities--and devote attorney and family support resources to thoughtfully resolving them."

That is what it looks like to design a system that doesn't feed the fire. By refusing to let fact chaos become the arena in which it plays out.

The seven deadly sins don't just end marriages. They fuel relationships, separations and in many cases the litigation long after both parties would be better served by peace. Recognizing the presence of addictions--and the divorce arena as a stimulus for compulsive revenge desires--is the first step. Building the tools and systems to interrupt the cycle is the second.

Family law has always been about transformation, not just dissolution. The question is whether we build the systems to match that ambition.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not represent the views of Blevans, Itzkowitz & Cantrell, LLP, or any of its clients.