Posted on February 19, 2019 in Divorce and Finances

Being able to afford your divorce may be one of your largest obstacles when you are considering whether to end your marriage. You will need enough money to hire a divorce attorney and support yourself when the process starts. You cannot rely on being able to immediately access the money in your marital accounts, which may be frozen. If you are financially depending on your spouse, it could take months to establish spousal maintenance payments. In order to afford a divorce, you can start saving money while married and consider other sources of financial support.

Emergency Fund

You need a source of money that is independent of your marital bank account. It could be an individual savings account or cash, as long as it is secure and easily accessible. Your savings should come from individual sources of income because taking the money from a joint account will draw suspicion from your spouse. The money could be:

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 Posted on February 14, 2019 in Child Custody

Since 2016, Illinois has used the term “allocation of parental responsibilities” instead of “child custody.” The name reflects that parenting after a divorce or separation is a shared responsibility, not just a determination of who gets to keep the kids. Each parent must fulfill his or her assigned responsibilities when the children are with him or her. If one parent is incapable or unwilling to assume those responsibilities, then a court may give sole responsibility to the other parent.

Caretaking Functions

Illinois’ Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act has a list of parental responsibilities, which it calls “caretaking functions.” There are eight functions that parents are expected to provide for their children during their parenting time:

1. Attending to a child’s nutrition, health, safety, and hygiene;

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 Posted on February 11, 2019 in Divorce

Teachers have a lower divorce rate as compared to other professions, but those who do get divorced face unique challenges. As a teacher, your primary concern is usually for your students. Your caregiving nature likely extends to your home life, as a spouse and parent. During your divorce, you may be focusing on your own needs more than you are accustomed to doing. It is important to take care of yourself during your divorce and plan how you will balance your teaching career with your personal needs.

Taking Time Off

Most divorcees use occasional personal days in order to attend meetings or court hearings. Teachers must also be aware of their emotional state and how it may affect their students:

• You must be able to make it through the school day without emotionally breaking down in front of your students; and
• Being distracted by your divorce may make you less attentive as a teacher.

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 Posted on February 06, 2019 in Family Law

It should be obvious that you are not allowed to break into your spouse’s locked filing cabinet in order to obtain his or her personal documents during your divorce. The same concept applies to digital information. You are not allowed to snoop through your spouse's computer or other electronic devices to find private communications and documents. The evidence you find would be inadmissible in your divorce case, and you could face criminal charges for violating eavesdropping laws. However, you can use digital information that your spouse makes available to the public.

Electronic Eavesdropping

Eavesdropping is the act of obtaining information that a person can reasonably expect to remain private. There are several methods someone could use to eavesdrop on his or her spouse’s electronic communications or access digital documents:

1. Unauthorized Log-In: Many computers and email accounts require a user name and password in order to access them. You may know or be able to guess your spouse’s log-in information, but you are not allowed to log in to his or her private accounts without permission.

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 Posted on February 03, 2019 in Divorce

Getting a divorce can ultimately lead to a more fulfilling life, but the immediate effect can be a blow to your self-confidence. It is common to feel like you failed in your marriage and question whether you can create other meaningful relationships. While you may struggle to move beyond this self-doubt, there are ways that you can boost your confidence during and after your divorce:

1. Remember Your Strengths: You are dwelling on the failures in your life, ignoring the many successes you have had, both professional and personal. Try writing out a list of your accomplishments to remind yourself that you are a strong and capable person. Successes could be getting a college degree, starting a job, or raising your children. Even the fact that you were married was an accomplishment because your positive qualities were enough for someone to want to marry you.
2. Talk to Your Support System: Your depression during your divorce can skew your memories of your past accomplishments and your sense of self-worth. A family member or close friend can tell you about the things they love about you. A divorce coach or therapist can help you look at your life more objectively and realize that you are being too hard on yourself.

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 Posted on January 30, 2019 in Child Support

Getting remarried is an exciting event because it signifies a resolution to your divorce in many ways. You have proven that you can find a new relationship. If you were receiving spousal maintenance, you can break that financial tie to your former spouse. However, your obligation to provide child support will remain, regardless of whether either of you gets remarried. There are limited circumstances in which the child support payments can be modified after one parent gets remarried.

Principles of Child Support

Divorced parents pay child support because they share a financial obligation to care for their children. That obligation will always remain with the two legal parents of the children and not with any new spouses. Your new spouse cannot become the legal parent of your children unless your co-parent relinquishes his or her parental rights and your new spouse adopts your children. Thus, courts have traditionally not considered the income of a new spouse when determining child support payments. However, an Illinois court ruling in 2014 broke with that tradition when it found that:

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 Posted on January 25, 2019 in Divorce

After more than a month, the federal government shutdown has ended with a deal to reopen the government for three weeks. However, President Donald Trump mentioned the possibility of another shutdown if he could not reach an agreement with Democratic leaders. You may wonder whether a shutdown has any effect on divorces. In most situations, the answer is “no.” A shutdown impacts the funding for federal courts, but state courts handle divorce and family law cases. A shutdown would likely affect a divorce only when one of the spouses is a federal employee.

Immediate Consequences

Federal employees do not receive pay during a government shutdown. This should not create any uncertainty about a spouse’s income during divorce negotiations because most employees receive back pay after the shutdown has ended. The government may not repay federal contractors, but those losses should not change the spouse’s future income once the government is running again. The missed pay could immediately affect people who:

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 Posted on January 23, 2019 in Divorce

You will need the assistance of several professionals when you are going through a divorce. Hiring a divorce attorney is a necessity because of the many legal complexities of the process. Some divorcees also find it helpful to see a mental health therapist to discuss their emotional issues related to the divorce. If you are working with both of these people, you may wonder why you would need to have a divorce coach. The answer is that a divorce coach provides a service that is unique from a therapist and can help you through the process.

Not a Therapist

The jobs of a divorce coach and a therapist do overlap in some basic areas. Both approach your divorce from a personal perspective, understanding that it is an emotional process. However, there are several differences in how a divorce coach can help you reach your goal:

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 Posted on January 19, 2019 in Child Custody

In the years following a divorce, opportunities come up that may require two parents to live in different parts of the country. You can contest your co-parent’s decision to relocate with your children, but the court may decide that the move is in their best interest. You may also find a career opportunity in another city that is too lucrative to pass up. Long-distance parenting is a difficult adjustment for you and your children and will never feel like an ideal situation. There are ways you can maintain a healthy relationship with your children.

1. Regular Communication: It may be impractical to see your children in person frequently, but you should have a weekly schedule of when you will talk to them. Your children should be able to rely on you calling them at the same times each week and feel like you will respond to them if they need to contact you. Video calls can give your conversations more intimacy than voice calls.

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 Posted on January 17, 2019 in Property Division

It can be difficult to continue to make house mortgage payments on your own after your divorce. However, you may be able to keep your marital home for the foreseeable future if you are able to get a reverse mortgage on your house. Reverse mortgages are available to people who are at least 62 years old and have a large amount of equity in their home – usually at least 50 percent. You use the money you receive from a reverse mortgage to pay off the remainder of what you owe on your home mortgage, with the surplus available for other expenses. Gray divorcees should consider whether a reverse mortgage could help them during the division of property, though there are risks.

How It Works

Assuming that you qualify, you can apply for a reverse mortgage – also known as a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage – with lenders who specialize in this type of loan. The amount of money that you can borrow will increase in conjunction with your age and the value of the property. With a reverse mortgage, you no longer make mortgage payments on your home or payments on the loan as long as you remain in the house. The loan and interest are due when:

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