Posted on June 06, 2018 in Children and Divorce

A selfish and cruel co-parent may purposely try to turn your children against you in order to damage your relationship with them. There is a psychological term for this practice, called parental alienation. Psychologists have an ongoing debate about whether Parental Alienation Syndrome is a mental disorder, but there is little doubt that a parent who is alienating his or her children against the other parent can cause emotional and psychological damage to the children. If you are the victim of parental alienation, you may need to go to family court to reassert your parental rights and protect your children.

Identifying Alienation

Parental alienation is different from situations where children have limited contact with a parent because the parent is a legitimate danger or has failed to maintain a relationship. Alienation involves one parent undermining a child’s relationship with the other parent for vindictive or selfish reasons. A parent may cause alienation by:

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 Posted on June 04, 2018 in Divorce

Illinois' Congress recently ratified the federal Equal Rights Amendment, making Illinois the 37th state to do so. The deadline for states to approve the amendment expired decades ago, but ERA advocates believe that reaching the 38-state requirement now would still allow the amendment to be enacted. ERA opponents have long argued that the amendment would allow federal overreach into state laws and diminish women’s rights in certain areas, including divorce and family law. However, Illinois divorce laws already include gender neutrality in their language.

ERA and Family Law

The ERA that the U.S. Congress approved is comprised of three sections, that state:

1. A person’s sex cannot be used to deny him or her equal rights;
2. Congress can use appropriate legislation to enforce the equal rights; and

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 Posted on May 30, 2018 in Divorce Over 50

People who divorce after age 50 may feel an urgency to start dating again and find a new romantic partner. You do not like the sudden loneliness you feel after decades of being married. There is also a heightened sense of your biological clock ticking and wanting to start a relationship while you can still enjoy it. You will learn that the dating process has changed since the time you met your former spouse. Online dating websites have in many ways taken the place of singles bars and other such venues. The prospect of meeting your match from the comfort of your computer can be both exciting and scary. Gray divorcees must be careful when using online dating services. Bad experiences can drain your post-divorce assets and damage your vulnerable psyche.

What is Online Dating?

Online dating sites are essentially social media sites for the purpose of starting relationships or friendships. As a member, you will create a profile that includes:

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 Posted on May 25, 2018 in Divorce

Lying to others in order to gain an advantage during your divorce is unethical and, in some cases, illegal. However, believing your own lies may ultimately be more emotionally damaging to you. People can lie to themselves for different reasons. Some lies are a defense mechanism to protect yourself from an uncomfortable truth. Other lies are your own insecurities trying to manifest themselves as truths. There are several lies that people commonly convince themselves of when they are going through a divorce:

1. My Spouse Is the Only One to Blame for the Divorce: First, it could be that no one was to blame for the divorce. Second, divorce usually occurs because both sides made mistakes.
2. I Will Never Get Married Again: This statement can be either your desire or your fear. However, you cannot predict whether you will meet someone new and fall in love again.
3. I Feel No Grief Over the End of My Marriage: Some sadness and regret will likely strike you during or after your divorce. It is natural and healthy to mourn the end of a relationship, even a bad one.

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 Posted on May 23, 2018 in Child Support

When contributing to child support, the paying parent is trusting that the recipient is using the money for child-related expenses. Misusing the money for selfish purposes is betraying the good-faith effort of the paying parent and possibly neglecting the needs of the children. However, most states lack mechanisms that monitor how a parent spends the child support payments that he or she receives. Suspicious behavior is not enough evidence to prove that a parent is misusing child support money. If you believe your former spouse is neglecting his or her financial responsibilities as a parent, you will need to prove that the misuse of money is hurting your children.

Purpose of Child Support

Child support is more than a requirement that you pay your former spouse if he or she has primary parenting time with your children. It is an agreement to share in child-related expenses, including:

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 Posted on May 18, 2018 in Divorce and Finances

Separating your auto insurance from your spouse's insurance is one of the actions you must take after finishing your divorce. There is no urgency to do it during your divorce, and finalizing who owns which vehicle will help with the process. However, getting separate insurance policies requires more than a simple phone call. You and your former spouse must take multiple measures to ensure you are no longer tied to each other through your insurance. It may also be time for both of you to shop around for different policies.

Joint Decision

You cannot remove your spouse from your combined auto insurance policy without his or her permission. Having auto insurance is a legal requirement for drivers. Ending your spouse’s insurance without permission may cause him or her to unknowingly break the law by driving. If your spouse is involved in a crash while uninsured, he or she may bear a greater financial burden for property damage and personal injury expenses.

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 Posted on May 16, 2018 in Child Custody

The decision of whether to allow one parent to relocate with his or her child is often difficult because there are valid arguments for both permitting and denying the petition. The petitioning parent may have an opportunity for a better quality of life, but the responding parent will also have a reduced relationship with his or her child. The decision comes down to whether the relocation will be better for the child. During a recent Illinois case, In re Marriage of Kavchak, a court approved a mother’s petition to relocate with her daughter to North Carolina, even though it would significantly limit the father’s ability to see the daughter.

Mother’s Argument

The mother is a physical therapist who has worked in higher education. Shortly before her divorce, she received an offer for a better-paying job at a university in North Carolina that would also pay for her study towards a doctorate. She accepted the job during the divorce and later filed a relocation petition to allow her daughter to move with her. Her reasons included:

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 Posted on May 10, 2018 in Child Custody

The effect of divorce on their children is one of the lingering factors that will cause parents to hesitate before separating. It is common for divorced parents to feel guilty about how their decision may be hurting their children. Divorced parents worry that their children:

• Have been traumatized by the separation;
• Are stressed by the co-parenting arrangement; and
• Will resent them for the divorce.

Though children of divorce face hardship, parents are not helping themselves or their children by feeling guilty about it.

Problems with Guilty Parenting

Divorced parents can respond to the guilt they feel in ways that are not healthy for the children. A common reaction is for co-parents to compete for their children’s love. The parents fear that their children are angry at them because of the divorce and try to compensate by being too lenient in their discipline or spending on gifts or trips. Competitive parents go a step further by trying to outdo or undermine each other. This may include:

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 Posted on May 04, 2018 in Divorce

Divorcing spouses are often looking for an edge against each other to receive a more favorable division of property or allocation of parental responsibilities. Some will resort to manipulative or illegal tactics, such as hiding assets or lying about the other spouse’s personal conduct. Catching your spouse in a lie will stop the illegal tactic and possibly lead to punishment. Your spouse may surprise you by how far he or she is willing to go to obtain an advantage during your divorce. The tactic may seem especially cruel or make no sense because your spouse is hurting him or herself as much as you. Here are four dirty tricks that spouses have used during their divorces:

1. Quitting Work: Spouses may under-report their incomes to gain an advantage in child or spousal support. People who are self-employed or run their own businesses can reduce their earnings during the divorce with the intention of increasing them once the divorce is over. However, some spouses will go as far as quitting their jobs during the divorce. They may take a lesser-paying job and plan to go back to their original career after the divorce is finished.

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 Posted on May 02, 2018 in Child Custody

An Illinois appellate court recently upheld a lower court decision that the non-biological mother of a child from a same-sex marriage is allowed parental rights after divorce. In the case of In re Marriage of Dee J., the spouses separated seven months after the biological mother gave birth to the child. The court considered the evidence in favor of the non-biological mother to be clear. The couple was married at the time of the child’s birth, and the non-biological mother was active in the child’s parenting. However, the case shows how a biological parent from a same-sex divorce may try to use the non-biological parent’s status against him or her.

Establishing Parentage

Illinois law assumes that it is in a child’s best interest to have two parents whenever possible because it provides greater financial and emotional support for the child. Even if not biologically related to a child, a person can be a legal parent to a child if:

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