Posted on September 13, 2016 in Divorce

There are a lot of factors that affect a couple's likelihood of divorcing. These factors include the age of each partner when the couple married, each partner's education and income level, and whether the couple has the same socioeconomic and cultural background.

Other factors are not quite as obvious. For example, the genders of the couple's children. You might not think that your child's gender has any effect on your likelihood of divorcing, but research has found that parents of daughters have a slightly higher divorce rate than parents of sons.

Do not assume that just because you have a daughter, you will get divorced. Correlation does not imply causation, when whether your marriage will end in divorce or not hinges much more greatly on your ability to communicate effectively with your partner to resolve the conflicts that arise. If you are experiencing problems in your marriage, speak with an experienced divorce lawyer to determine all of your options. If you have exhausted all efforts to repair the issues you face, filing for divorce might be the healthiest option for all members of your family, regardless of their gender.

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 Posted on September 07, 2016 in Child Support

When a couple with children divorces, the court determines numerous issues related to their children's care after the divorce. These issues include a parenting time schedule, allocation of parental responsibilities, and an appropriate amount of child support. Child support is money paid from one parent to the other to help to cover the costs of caring for the child. Generally, this is paid to the parent who has the majority of the parenting time with the child.

If you have been ordered to make child support payments, you probably want to know what the money is allocated to cover. Certain expenses, such as childcare and healthcare insurance, may be ordered outside of your child support order. Below are a few examples of what child support may be used to cover. If you have evidence that your former partner is not using the child support you send on these items and instead, on his or her own personal expenses, speak with a family lawyer about modifying your child support payment or altering how the money is disbursed to ensure it reaches your child.

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 Posted on September 05, 2016 in Divorce

Following a divorce, many Americans fall in love again and choose to remarry. This is normal. Although many divorced individuals have a few reservations about entering into a second marriage, the desire to spend one's life with a romantic partner often overrides these reservations, resulting in a second marriage and potentially, more children for one or both parties.

One thing that does differentiate second marriages from first marriages is that it is much more common for individuals to sign prenuptial agreements when entering their second marriage. This is for two reasons: often, an individual has more assets when he or she enters his or her second marriage when compared to the assets he or she held at the start of the first marriage, and because many individuals who saw their assets be divided between themselves and their former partners in their first divorce want to avoid having to go through that a second time if they divorce again.

It is actually more common for one's second marriage to end in divorce than their first marriage. This is due to multiple factors, such as the stress of blending two families and the failure to learn from the mistakes of one's first marriage. If you find yourself unhappy in your second marriage and you are considering divorce, know that it will not be exactly like your first divorce for the following reasons:

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 Posted on August 26, 2016 in Children and Divorce

If you are a parent considering filing for divorce, you are probably concerned about how your divorce will affect your children. Divorce affects every member of the family and in many cases, individuals outside the family like the couple's parents and siblings. Regardless of their age, children are affected by their parents' divorces.

Certain factors can color how a child is affected by his or her parents' divorce, such as the child's age and gender. Children of both genders can become anxious and dependent following a divorce, but there are specific ways that each gender tends to work through these emotions. A child's gender can also play a role in how the divorce continues to affect him or her years later, even into adulthood. As a parent, it is important that you minimize the effects your divorce has on your child by remaining emotionally available to him or her and working with your former spouse to co-parent your child effectively, regardless of your child's gender.

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 Posted on August 24, 2016 in Child Support

The recent revisions to the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act clarified the rules regarding parents' obligations to help their children with college expenses. Specifically, they give the court the right to order that divorced parents contribute to their children's college expenses if the child or one of the parents petition for such an order before the child's 23rd birthday. The amount of money a parent can be required to contribute is limited to the cost of attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the parent may not be required to continue to contribute past the student's 25th birthday.

Parents are also permitted to dispute orders for financial contributions to college costs. The language in the law states that parents may be required to contribute “except for good cause shown.” There are multiple reasons why a parent might feel he or she has good cause to not be required to contribute to his or her child's college bill, one of which is the sense that the money would not be put to good use.

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 Posted on August 19, 2016 in Divorce

Getting divorced can be expensive. Between the meetings with your attorney, the time spent out of work to attend court hearings, and the added expenses of reaching a fair settlement, such as hiring a child custody evaluator or a real estate appraiser, your divorce can quickly become a money pit. For some couples, there is no way to get around these expenses. But for others, there are a few viable ways to reduce the expenses of ending a marriage.

Talk to your lawyer about ways you can save money on your divorce. A good lawyer wants to save his or her clients money and will work with you to find ways to make this possible.

Consider Mediation or a Collaborative Divorce

One of the greatest expenses divorcing couples face is the expense of litigation. When you involve the court system in your divorce, your expenses can spiral out of control very quickly. If you have an amicable relationship with your spouse, though, you can save money by either working with a mediator to reach a fair divorce settlement or by collaborating to draft your own settlement. In either of these scenarios, it is still important that both party retain his or her own lawyer.

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 Posted on August 16, 2016 in Divorce

Depending on your cultural background, arranged marriage as a concept might be wildly foreign, an outdated idea that perhaps held some prominence with your parents' or grandparents' generation but is not relevant to you, or a completely normal, even expected, part of life. Globally, 53.25 percent of marriages are arranged, according to a 2016 statistics. In 2012, the global divorce rate for arranged marriages was six percent, a much lower figure than the divorce percentage for couples in non-arranged marriages.

Does this mean your marriage is doomed because it was not arranged or conversely, that it is destined to last because it was arranged? Absolutely not. But what the statistics show is that despite certain stereotypes and assumptions, arranged marriages do exist and flourish throughout the world today.

Factors Present in Modern Arranged Marriages

Generally, parents who arrange marriages for their children do so with their children's best interest in mind. That means choosing partners whose beliefs, social status, and education levels match their own. The most common conflicts in marriages are conflicts borne of incompatibility in these areas, such as conflicts about how to spend money or the religion in which to raise their children. By choosing partners with similar worldviews and backgrounds, parents largely eliminate these conflicts.

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 Posted on August 11, 2016 in Child Custody

When a couple with a child divorces, the court must determine the best possible parenting time arrangement for their child by examining various factors at play in the parents' lives. These factors include each parent's income and asset level, the individuals living in each parent's household, and any issues present that could impact the child's health or safety. Drug or excessive alcohol use by a parent is one of these factors.

In contentious divorces, one parent might accuse the other of struggling with drug or alcohol addiction. The court must address this to determine whether it is true, which usually means that the parent accused of having an addiction must undergo a drug test. It is up to the judge to determine whether a divorcing party must take a drug test. Sometimes, the judge does this following a request by one spouse and in other cases, the judge decides this without input from either divorcing party.

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 Posted on August 09, 2016 in Child Custody

If you are a father facing divorce, you might find yourself stressing about what will happen to your relationship with your children. Although you have a full, equal role in your child's life, many individuals throughout the United States hold outdated notions about a mother's role in her child's life versus a father's role. You might also have heard that courts tend to favor mothers when determining custody arrangements and that after a divorce, a father simply becomes an ATM for child and spousal support.

Do not let these ideas trap you into thinking you have no power or rights in your divorce. The concept of child custody has been dramatically altered in recent years and now, it is known as parenting time and parental responsibilities. These refer to the roles that each parent fills in his or her child's life and the specified blocks of time they spend with the child in the years after their divorce. Under Illinois law, a parent's gender has no bearing on these determinations and when child support is deemed to be necessary, it is ordered based on the parenting time arrangement determined by the court. Your attorney will fight for your right to be treated fairly during these determinations and if you feel your gender is being used in any way to justify less parenting time or a larger financial obligation than you deserve, voice your concerns to your lawyer.

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 Posted on August 04, 2016 in Child Custody

In most instances, not much. Your former partner has as much of a right to build and maintain a meaningful relationship with your child as you have. During their time together, your child and your former partner might spend time with extended family or friends and do activities together. Unless your former partner is actively putting your child in a position where he or she can be harmed, such as spending time with individuals who use illegal drugs or engage in criminal activities or doing dangerous activities without taking the proper precautions, such as snowmobiling without wearing helmets or shooting guns without observing proper gun safety precautions, you cannot tell your former partner how to spend his or her time with your child. One of the reasons why the concept of child custody was replaced with parenting time was to eliminate the sense that one parent has a greater level of control over a child's life than the other. Co-parenting can be difficult. To make it easier, always be aware of the limits of your parenting time and parenting responsibility arrangements. In other words, pick your battles.

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