Posted on May 27, 2020 in Spousal Maintenance

Depending upon the circumstances surrounding your marriage and divorce, you may feel that you should be entitled to spousal maintenance payments from your ex-spouse. Unlike child support, spousal support is not presumed to be appropriate in every situation. Instead, Illinois law requires each case to be weighed on its own merits to determine if the need for such supports actually exists. This means that, if you think you deserve to receive maintenance, you may need to explicitly request consideration for it.

Marital Misconduct Not a Factor

Unless you and your spouse included behavior clauses in a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement, the court will not consider the conduct of either party when deciding whether to award maintenance. While your spouse’s behavior may leave you feeling like he or she owes you some type of restitution, the law in Illinois specifically prohibits marital misconduct from being a factor in maintenance proceedings. Spousal support is meant to help you meet your financial needs and obligations. It is not intended to be used as a punitive measure against your spouse.

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 Posted on May 22, 2020 in Divorce

If your spouse suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, or another type of personality disorder, you may have concerns about how he or she will respond to divorce. Ending a marriage can be extremely difficult no matter the circumstances, but when a spouse suffers from a mental illness, the situation can be particularly stressful. You may encounter legal obstacles during the divorce process that are nearly impossible to manage on your own. Fortunately, a divorce lawyer experienced in handing cases involving mentally ill spouses can help you navigate this tricky situation.

Protect Your Finances

Sometimes, a mental illness like a personality disorder manifests in impulsive behavior. This may include going on shopping sprees or spending money through a gambling addiction or substance abuse problem. There are a few different ways that you can protect your finances before the divorce process is initiated. If you are not quite ready to divorce or you suspect the divorce process will take a considerable amount of time, you may want to obtain a legal separation.

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 Posted on May 15, 2020 in Child Support

For many individuals, it takes a divorce to highlight just how financially dependent a person may be on his or her spouse. This, of course, may be all the more true if you are also trying to raise children. It is for exactly such reasons that the divorce laws in Illinois include provisions for spousal maintenance and child support. These orders are issued, when appropriate, by the court to distribute the financial burden more equitably between you and your ex-spouse. But, what would happen if your ex-spouse was no longer around to provide support for you or your children? Would you be able to get by? If the answer is no, you may want to speak with family law attorney about including life insurance requirements in your divorce agreement.

Why Life Insurance?

A life insurance policy is designed to pay financial benefits to the named beneficiaries of a insured individual upon the insured person’s death. These funds are often used to cover funeral costs, pay down debts, or to simply maintain a similar lifestyle. Married individuals will commonly name their spouse as the primary beneficiary to help provide a level of security in the event of their death.

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 Posted on May 07, 2020 in Spousal Maintenance

In some divorce cases, one of the spouses is entitled to spousal maintenance, or alimony. Maintenance is typically ordered when one spouse is left at a significant financial disadvantage by divorce or when a valid prenuptial agreement stipulates spousal maintenance arrangements. Whether you are a payor or recipient of spousal maintenance, you may have many questions about how long payments will last. Spousal maintenance is often temporary, but there are some cases in which long term or permanent maintenance is ordered. Read on to learn more.

Spousal Support Laws in Illinois

When determining whether spousal maintenance is appropriate, Illinois courts consider several factors including but not limited to:

• The length of the marriage
• The standard of living established during the marriage
• Each spouse’s income and assets
• Each spouse’s present and future earning capacity

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 Posted on April 30, 2020 in Divorce

The Baby Boomer generation has never been one to follow tradition and maintain the status quo. In past generations, it was often said that the longer your marriage lasted, the less likely you were to get a divorce. Today, things are quite different. A large number of older couples are choosing to divorce later in life, and the divorce rate of those 50 and older has doubled over just the past two decades. For those 60 and older, the divorce rate has tripled. This trend makes sense, however. Many older couples today find themselves with grown children out of the house and realize they are no longer happy in their marriage. It is never too late to take a step towards happiness. Gray divorces, however, do have their unique challenges, and baby boomers themselves are not the only group impacted. The millennial children of the baby boomer generation, most of them now adults, are also impacted by their parents decision to divorce. Changing family dynamics can be difficult for everyone involved, including adult children.

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 Posted on April 24, 2020 in Child Support

If you are a single parent entitled to child support, you have probably come to rely heavily on these funds. Whether it is child care, groceries, educational or extracurricular activities, or other costs, raising a child is expensive. When a parent does not receive his or her child support, it can be hard to make ends meet. Furthermore, child support orders are legally binding court orders. A parent cannot simply choose to stop payments. If a parent fails to meet his or her child support obligation, he or she can be charged with contempt of court and face other serious consequences.

Enforcing a Child Support Order

In order for a child support arrangement to be enforceable, it must be officially ordered by the court. If you and your child’s other parent had an informal child support arrangement, you will need to take the steps to establish a formal child support order. If the legal paternity of your child has not been established and you want to collect child support from your child’s father, you will need to establish paternity before you can collect child support.

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 Posted on April 17, 2020 in Division of Assets

When a couple gets divorced, the terms of the divorce are largely dependent upon financial information. Illinois courts divide marital property according to equitable distribution, which means that each spouse is given a fair, but not always equal, portion of the marital estate based on their income, assets, employability, and other factors. Child support and spousal support payments are also based on the spouses’ income and assets. The more complex the spouses’ financial portfolios are, the more likely complications will arise during the divorce process.

Spouses who own complex assets are also more likely to attempt to hide assets or lie about finances in order to manipulate the divorce terms. If you are considering divorce and your financial situation is less than straightforward or you have concerns about hidden assets, a forensic accountant may be a valuable resource.

Examining Financial Data for Inconsistencies

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 Posted on April 03, 2020 in Paternity

Under Illinois law, the legal relationship between a child and his or her father is only presumed if the man was married to child’s mother at the time of, just prior to, or just after the child’s birth. According to the most recent available statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, more than 40 percent of all births in the United States are to unmarried mothers. These numbers indicate that, on average, paternity cannot be presumed in about two out of five cases.

The most common method for establishing paternity when there is no existing presumption—or to rebut a presumption in certain cases—is by means of a voluntary acknowledgement of paternity (VAP) form. When both the mother and father complete the form properly, it creates a legal parent-child relationship between the man and his son or daughter. As such, completing the VAP form is an extremely serious matter, and one that should not be taken lightly.

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 Posted on March 26, 2020 in Annulments

Life is full of unexpected turns of events. Sometimes, an individual gets married but quickly realizes that the marriage was a mistake. If you have found yourself in a situation like this, you may be wondering what your options are for ending the marriage. You may have heard about annulments, but you might not know exactly how a person gets his or her marriage annulled. In Illinois, annulments are only granted under certain circumstances. If you do not qualify to have your marriage annulled, divorce may be your only option for ending your marriage.

Difference Between Annulment and Divorce

While a divorce legally terminates a marriage, an annulment rescinds a marriage. An annulment, called a “Declaration of Invalidity of Marriage” in Illinois, makes it as if the couple was never married. If you receive a judgment of invalidity it is if your marriage never took place in the eyes of the law. Typically, judgments of invalidity are retroactive, meaning the judgment is effective on the marriage date. When a marriage is considered retroactively invalid, the court making the determination of invalidity will not have the authority to divide the spouses’ property or make determinations about child custody or child support. Instead, separate proceedings will need to be initiated to manage such concerns.

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 Posted on March 20, 2020 in Division of Assets

If you and your spouse are headed for divorce, you know that you will be expected to divide your marital property between the two of you. While you may not know for sure how that will play out, you may already be thinking about who—if either of you—will keep the marital home, who will get which car, and how to split the household furniture. In the stress and confusion of the divorce process, however, you may be forgetting about a very important—and possibly very valuable—asset of which you may be entitled a portion. Experts say that retirement accounts are the most commonly overlooked assets in a divorce case.

Retirement Savings and Plans

Before marital property can be divided, both you and your spouse should provide one another with a full accounting of all of your assets and debts, even if you think he or she already knows about them. In some cases, this may require a few calls to old employers inquiring about the status of employer-funded retirement programs or plans. You may realize that you have forgotten about a 401(k) plan or similar account that was opened years ago. The same may be true for your spouse, and the money in such accounts, depending on when the accounts were funded, may be considered part of the marital estate.

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