Posted on December 04, 2018 in Child Support

Losing your job and being forced into retirement normally qualifies as a change of circumstances that will allow you to reduce your child support payments. The recent decision for In re Marriage of Verhines shows that a court will consider more than income to determine a parent’s child support obligation in high-income cases. The Illinois appellate court said that there were unique circumstances in this case as opposed to a normal request for child support relief.

Case Background

A 65-year-old divorced father of a teenage son initially requested a reduction of his child support payments in December 2015 after his forced termination from his previous position as an executive at a packaging company. The father was paying $3,043 per month based on his previous income but effectively entered retirement because he was unable to secure another full-time executive position at his age. A trial court reduced his child support payments to $1,700 per month, claiming that the father’s income was $78,000 per year and that he could not be expected to withdraw from his retirement benefits to maintain the same level of child support payments. He had previously taken $400,000 out of his retirement account to pay for personal expenses.

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 Posted on November 30, 2018 in Divorce

Divorce leaves you little choice but to re-enter the workforce if you were not employed during your marriage. You may receive spousal maintenance on the condition that you try to become self-supporting. You need your own source of income anyways because maintenance payments may not give you enough money to live comfortably. Finding a job can be a difficult and sometimes frustrating experience, particularly if you have been unemployed for several years. You must prepare for the job search process to find ultimate success.

Determine Your Career

Looking for a job starts with knowing what job you want and how to present yourself as a qualified candidate. It may not be as simple as re-entering the career field of your last job because job requirements can change in just a few years. Before you apply for jobs, you should:

• Discuss your job search goals with a career counselor;

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 Posted on November 26, 2018 in High Asset Divorce

Owning a second home can complicate your high asset divorce. If you want to keep the vacation home for yourself, you will need to give up other valuable marital properties in return. Neither of you may want the property because you cannot foresee getting the same use and enjoyment out of it after you are divorced. Some divorcing couples choose to sell their vacation homes and divide the proceeds. You must weigh the positives and negatives when deciding whether to keep or sell a second home.

Keeping the Home

The financial and emotional value in owning a vacation home may be greater than what you could actually receive in a sale. By keeping the home, you have the option of sharing use of it with your former spouse or renting it to other vacationers. Your enjoyment from the home is also a valid reason to keep it. However, you should consider the practical cost of owning the home:

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 Posted on November 23, 2018 in Divorce

When reflecting on what you should be thankful for this holiday season, you may not immediately think of your divorce. Ending your marriage can cause stress and sadness, but a well-executed divorce should leave you in better shape than you were before. Here are five reasons you can be thankful for your divorce:

1. You Are Free from Your Marriage: Your marriage should be a source of comfort and relief, but an unhappy marriage will instead add to your stress. You can become emotionally exhausted from having frequent arguments with your spouse or trying to avoid starting one. You may not realize how your marriage affected your mood until you get divorced.
2. Your Children Have a Better Home Environment: Living with two unhappy parents can traumatize your children more than you getting divorced. Witnessing your unhealthy marriage upsets your children and warps their expectations about adult relationships. As a single parent, you can focus on being a better parent and helping them grow up to be healthy adults.

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 Posted on November 20, 2018 in Alimony / Maintenance

Spousal maintenance payments in a divorce agreement often have a set duration, based on how long the spouses were married. In Illinois, the maintenance payor can petition to terminate the payments before the end date if the recipient has remarried or is living with someone else in a de facto marriage. Determining whether someone has remarried is straightforward, but the two sides may disagree about whether the recipient’s cohabitation is fulfilling the same role as a marriage.

Weighing the Evidence

Cohabitation becomes a de facto marriage when a spousal maintenance recipient is in an intimate relationship that includes financial support or codependency. Illinois law refers to it as living with someone on a resident, continuing conjugal basis. Illinois courts use six factors to determine whether cohabitation reaches this status:

• The length of the relationship;

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 Posted on November 14, 2018 in Child Custody

No age is too young for your divorce to emotionally affect your child. Infants do not understand divorce as a concept, but they notice changes in their routines and their parents’ emotions. Unlike older children, they cannot express how they feel in words, leaving them only their behavior. It is common for young children of divorce to become irritable, clingy, depressed, or anxious. Your parenting time is vital towards your young child’s development because he or she needs regular contact with both parents to develop bonds of support and trust.

Consistent Routines

Children form their attachments with their parents during infancy, and missing that stage of bonding can affect a child-parent relationship for the rest of their lives. A parenting schedule usually gives the children extended visits with each parent, but the frequency of bonding time is more important with infants that duration. Two hours every day or every other day may be sufficient bonding time for the non-primary parent. When creating a parenting plan for your infant, remember that:

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 Posted on November 10, 2018 in Divorce

Statistics from the Pentagon show that 3.1 percent of the married members of the U.S. Military divorced in 2017. The Pentagon calculated the percentage from the number of married members at the beginning of the year and the number of reported divorces by the end of the year. It is difficult to compare the military divorce rate to the overall divorce rate in the U.S. because they are collected and measured differently. The national divorce rate is expressed as the number of divorces per 1,000 people. Still, military divorce data can show trends and subgroups that have a higher rate of divorce.

Divorce Numbers

The military divorce rate has remained around 3 percent for the past four years, while the number of military members who are married has dropped to around 51 percent. Researchers consider millennials to be largely responsible for the declining marriage rate, which also means fewer divorces. However, the military marriage rate is still higher than the national average. Other military divorce statistics show some interesting trends:

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 Posted on November 07, 2018 in Divorce

The habits that you form with your spouse during your marriage are difficult to break, even after your divorce. It seems obvious that you should not remain in contact with your ex-spouse unless it is necessary, such as with co-parenting. However, you need to adjust to the new personal boundaries that your divorce created, which is not easy because of your close relationship with your former spouse. There are four rules for respecting your former spouse’s boundaries:

1. Do Not Ask Your Ex for Help: You may have relied on your former spouse to fix problems during your marriage, such as household repairs, car troubles, or tech support. You may feel tempted to continue asking him or her for help with these problems, even though you are no longer together. Doing this puts your former spouse in an awkward position. You should seek help from other friends and family or hire a professional.

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 Posted on November 03, 2018 in Paternity

As a father, you cannot forgo your financial obligation to your biological children, even if you no longer see them after divorcing or separating from their mother. However, you may not be required to make child support payments if you are not the child’s father. Family law courts prefer for a child to have two legally established parents for purposes of support and security. If the court presumes that you are the father, you will need to file a form stating that you deny paternity of the child.

Establishing Paternity

Illinois law assumes that you are the biological father of a child if you were married to the mother during the child’s conception or birth. If you have never been married to the mother, you can still be the legal father if:

• You sign a Voluntary Acknowledgment of Paternity form;
• Illinois Child Support Services enters an order than names you as the father; or

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 Posted on October 31, 2018 in High Asset Divorce

Some marital properties from a divorce are more valuable to you if you sell them instead of deciding which one of you gets to keep them. In a divorce sale or auction, you can convert properties that neither of you wants into money, which you split as part of your division of property. You do not have to organize your divorce sale together with your spouse, but he or she must approve the sale of any marital properties. You must plan ahead for your divorce sale to ensure that you will receive full value for your properties.

Advantages

You will have different needs as a single adult than when you were married. Some properties will be impractical to keep as part of your new lifestyle. For other properties, their monetary value is more useful than the enjoyment you get from them. Selling these properties may be to your advantage because:

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