Posted on April 28, 2020 in Divorce

One of the many uncomfortable tasks that you have following your decision to divorce is when and how to tell others about it. You need to break the news personally to your children and close family members. Some friends may also deserve to hear the news directly from you. What about the other people you interact with on a regular basis? It could be emotionally tiresome to repeat your divorce conversation with all of your friends and other social acquaintances. Some couples will instead announce their divorce on social media. Before you decide whether a social media announcement would be right for you, you should consider the potential benefits and pitfalls.

Advantages of a Social Media Announcement

The most appealing part of announcing your divorce through social media is that it removes the pressure of having numerous in-person conversations about your divorce. Beyond that, a well-executed social media announcement can help you control your public message about your divorce:

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 Posted on March 10, 2020 in Child Support

Not all cases of a parent failing to pay child support involve “deadbeat” parents who are trying to shirk their financial responsibility. Sometimes, a parent cannot afford the payments due to circumstances that are out of their control, such as:

• Losing their job
• Suffering an injury that prevents them from working
• Being forced to make a major purchase or go into debt because of an emergency

If you find yourself unable to keep up with your child support payments, you need to present the problem in court and see if you can reduce your payments.

What Not to Do

You can be found in contempt of a court order if you do not pay child support, even if you cannot afford the payments. Do not assume that it is okay to miss a payment without saying anything to your co-parent. Regardless of your financial means, you are still knowingly violating your child support order. You should also avoid creating an informal agreement with your co-parent where you reduce your child support payments or defer payment. A family law court will not recognize changes to your child support payments that are made outside of the court-approved order. An informal agreement will likely not protect you if your co-parent files a complaint against you for not paying child support.

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 Posted on February 12, 2020 in Property Division

Divorce has a way of affecting every aspect of your life – including your retirement plans. Getting a divorce can deplete your retirement savings, disrupt your scheduled contributions, and throw off your planned retirement age. Those who are most affected are people going through a grey divorce, which is when people age 50 and older divorce after several years of marriage. A person in their 50s has less time to adjust their plans before they retire. No matter your age, divorce does not have to decimate your retirement plan if you are prepared during your negotiations:

1. Prioritize Retirement Benefits: The value of your retirement account is marital property that you include in the division of assets. In order to keep valuable property, such as your marital home, you could agree to give up a portion of your retirement benefits or forgo your claim to your spouse’s benefits. Making this deal may be short-sighted because you are depleting your retirement plan and paying for maintenance and property taxes on the home. It may make more sense to downsize your home and preserve your retirement benefits.

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 Posted on December 27, 2019 in Prenuptial Agreements

Nobody who is about to get married wants to think about the possibility that they may one day get divorced. You create a prenuptial agreement with that scenario in mind, which makes asking for a prenup an awkward conversation to have with your fiance. For some people, it is a worthwhile conversation to have given their individual circumstances. The agreement can decide how you will divide your marital properties and pay spousal maintenance at a time when it is easier to negotiate with each other than it would be during a divorce. Creating a prenuptial agreement would be particularly helpful if any of the following applies to you:

1. There Is an Income Gap Between You and Your Partner: When one spouse is the breadwinner in a relationship, the other spouse becomes financially dependent upon the marriage. The solution in the event of a divorce is spousal maintenance paid to the lower-income spouse, but the higher-income spouse is likely to try to minimize those payments. By including spousal maintenance in the prenuptial agreement, the lower-income spouse has more certainty about the amount of financial support they would receive after a divorce.

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 Posted on November 11, 2019 in Spousal Maintenance

The beginning of 2019 saw an important change for couples looking to include spousal maintenance in their divorce agreements. A federal tax reform law from 2017 eliminated the popular alimony tax deduction. Spousal maintenance payors can no longer claim a tax deduction on their payments for any divorce agreement created starting in 2019. In turn, maintenance recipients are not required to include the payments in their taxable income. The alimony deduction was an incentive for payors to agree to higher maintenance payments, and divorce professionals feared that its elimination would make maintenance negotiations more difficult. States had more than a year to prepare for the elimination of the alimony deduction, and Illinois responded in 2018 with a revision to its spousal maintenance law.

Net Income

There were three major changes to Illinois’ spousal maintenance law. The first was that the formula for determining payments uses net income instead of gross income. Your net income is the money you receive in a paycheck after deductions for taxes and benefits plans. Illinois believes this switch is better at accounting for the tax burden of maintenance payers.

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 Posted on October 19, 2019 in Child Custody

During a divorce, a court rules on the allocation of parental responsibilities by considering what is in the best interest of the child. Listening to the child’s preferences is part of understanding their best interest, but courts will not give a child’s preference the same weight in every case. A parenting plan is an important part of creating a structured living environment for children after their parents have separated. Though the parents and the court want the child to be happy with the arrangement, there are times when adults have a better understanding of what is best for the children.

How Child Preference Is Weighed

Children of divorce may have a preference about which parent they will live with for a majority of the time. However, the issue of child preference does not come up in many parenting cases. Some children are uncomfortable choosing sides or admitting that they have a preference. When they do express a preference, the court may give it little or no credence if:

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 Posted on September 22, 2019 in Property Division

Except in rare circumstances, only one of you will continue to own your marital home after your divorce. The most contentious issue surrounding your marital home will be who will keep it or whether you should sell it and divide the proceeds. If one of you is keeping your house, it is important to complete the agreement by legally transferring ownership and financial responsibility to one person. As the person keeping the home, you do not want your former spouse to have ownership rights over the property. As the person who is giving up the home, you do not want to be liable for mortgage payments on a house that you no longer own.

Property Title

The property title for your house is your ownership interest in the house, which can be full or partial. When you co-own a home with your spouse, both of your names are on the title to show that you each have partial ownership of the house. If your spouse agrees to give you full ownership of your marital home, you will assume your spouse’s ownership interest in the title. A deed is a legal document that transfers a property title to a new owner. Quitclaim deeds are the most common deeds used during Illinois divorce because:

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 Posted on August 14, 2019 in Divorce

Getting a divorce may mean having to join the workforce for people who were primarily relying on their spouse for income. For other people who already work, they may need a better paying job to support themselves. Spousal maintenance payments can help a lower-earning spouse maintain the lifestyle that they were accustomed to during their marriage. However, courts often grant maintenance on the condition that the recipient must make a good-faith effort to better their financial situation. There are several factors that you must consider when trying to find a job after your divorce:

1. Your Career Prospects: Did you previously have a job or career? Some people leave their jobs or do not seek employment in order to focus on their home while their spouse focuses on their career. Having prior experience in a job or training in a career will improve your chances of being hired. People with limited experience are often limited to entry-level jobs that do not require specialized skills.

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 Posted on July 09, 2019 in Child Custody

Single parents need to take the opportunity to go on a vacation with their children, even if the idea seems less exciting after a divorce. Divorced parents see their children less often than when they were married because of the division of parenting time. A trip is an opportunity for the parent to bond with the children and create happy memories. When planning a vacation with your children, there are several factors related to your divorce that you should consider.

Parenting Plan

You do not need to limit your vacation so that it fits within your regular parenting schedule but will need to discuss your vacation plans with your co-parent:

• Your co-parent has a right to know when your children are going to be out of town;
• Your co-parent must agree to any deviation in your parenting schedule; and
• You may need your co-parent’s permission to travel with your children, depending on where you are going.

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 Posted on June 11, 2019 in Family Law

The same divorce laws apply to same-sex spouses in Illinois as they do to any other married couples. There is the same presumption of the equitable distribution of marital properties and allocation of parental responsibilities. The average same-sex divorce may be slightly different from the average heterosexual divorce because the recency of the same-sex marriage law makes it unlikely that they will be divorcing after a long-duration marriage. Divorcing same-sex spouses are more likely to have unique complications with establishing legal parentage of their children, which can impair one of the spouse’s parental rights.

Establishing Parenthood

The Illinois Parentage Act of 2015 defines four ways that someone is legally presumed to be the parent of a child if they did not give birth to the child:

• The person is married to the mother at the time of birth, excluding surrogacies;

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