We break new ground in the in-depth mechanistic understanding of the molecular behavior of tert-butyl methacrylate (t-BMA) and N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAM) copolymers upon thermal treatment and correlate this understanding with the mechanical properties of the resulting materials. We explore—via nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and infrared (IR) spectroscopic measurements—the formation of cyclic anhydride and imide structures and exploit high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) coupled to size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) as well as tandem MS (MS/MS) to correlate the time and temperature dependent cyclization processes. Critically, we propose a reshuffling mechanism describing dynamic ring-opening events involving the anhydride and imide structures, which enables the in-depth understanding of the dynamic material properties. Drawing on information from low-molecular-weight model systems, we translate our findings to high-molar-mass polymers, showing that our mechanistic model enables the understanding ...