Posted on December 17, 2018 in Child Custody

Teenagers can react differently to their first holiday season after a divorce than a younger child will. Younger children are more open about feeling sad or upset, while teenagers may try to suppress their emotions so as not to create turmoil. As a result, they may seem disinterested and unenthusiastic about the holidays but are actually upset and possibly angry. You need to approach your teenager differently than you would a young child when deciding on how to handle parenting time during the holidays.

Making Decisions

Teenagers generally seek more independence as they near adulthood. A divorce forces a change upon them, taking away their ability to control their family lives. They may feel like they cannot decide how and with whom they will celebrate the holidays. You can give them a sense of control by talking to them before deciding:

• Which holiday traditions you will continue;

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 Posted on December 12, 2018 in Divorce

Going through a divorce can put you at risk of identity theft by your spouse, who knows much of your personal information and may be motivated to use it against you. He or she may steal your identity for financial gain or revenge. Even if your spouse has no history of stealing from you, the stress of divorce may cause him or her to behave unusually. If you do not protect yourself in time, identity theft can drain your financial resources and ruin your credit rating.

Prevention

You should act during your divorce as though your personal information is vulnerable, even if the likelihood that your spouse would steal your identity seems remote. Your spouse knows enough about you to circumvent some of the security measures that protect your private accounts. At the beginning of your divorce, you should:

• Run a credit report so you are aware of all the financial accounts you are connected to and may be liable for;

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 Posted on December 07, 2018 in Divorce

Telling each person you know individually about your divorce can be exhausting and stressful. It also creates many socially awkward situations where the person is not sure how to respond to the news. You would feel relieved if you could just tell them all at the same time. Social media makes this possible in ways that previous generations did not have. However, you must carefully plan out when and how you make the announcement because it will determine how people respond to the news:

1. Tell Your Closest Friends First: There is no avoiding having a conversation about your divorce with your family and closest friends. They deserve to hear the news from you personally because they may be emotionally invested in your relationship. Think of how you would feel if you learned about your best friend’s divorce through a Facebook announcement. Your friends can also be your allies when making your larger announcement.

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 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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