Physical abuse, emotional abuse, psychological manipulation, and financial exploitation are just some of the forms of domestic violence suffered by individuals in Illinois and across the country. Domestic violence is shockingly common. Sadly, many people suffer in silence because they are not aware of the resources and legal tools at their disposal.

If you are a victim of domestic violence, you may be wondering whether or not you should hire a lawyer. Family law attorneys experienced in domestic violence matters can help you navigate complex legal issues like protective orders, child custody, and property division during divorce. An attorney’s job is to advocate for you and ensure your rights are not violated.

Taking Legal Action After Domestic Abuse

If you are unsure of whether a lawyer can benefit your particular situation, consider the following factors:

Child-related matters in a divorce are often some of the most contentious aspects of a divorce case. They are also some of the most consequential aspects of the divorce. When divorcing parents disagree about the allocation of parental responsibilities and parenting time, a guardian ad litem may be assigned to the case. The guardian ad litem evaluates the circumstances of the custody dispute, investigates both parties, interviews family members and caretakers, and makes an informed recommendation to the court about the case outcome. Working with a GAL can sometimes be uncomfortable. He or she may need to ask personal questions, investigate the parents’ homes, and interview teachers or other people important to the child’s life.

If a guardian ad litem was assigned in your divorce or child custody case, here are a few tips to help you make the most of the situation.

Keep the GAL’s Intention in Mind

A guardian ad litem is expected to investigate the parties in a child-related legal dispute and determine what is best for the child. Although it can be awkward having someone investigating your personal life and home environment, it is important to keep the GAL’s intentions in mind. He or she is ultimately here for your child.

If you are like many people, you are not familiar with the term “divorce coach.”  Divorce coaching is a relatively new service that is becoming more and more popular. Ending a marriage can take a massive toll on a person. Divorce can be so overwhelming that some divorcing individuals make mistakes or agree to unfair divorce terms just to get the process over with. A divorce coach provides emotional support and practical guidance to divorcing spouses and helps them navigate the major life changes that accompany divorce. If you are getting divorced, here are five reasons to consider working with a divorce coach.

You Need Help to Get Through this Stressful Life Experience

The Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory is a scientific tool first published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research that is used to predict stress-induced health problems. Divorce is listed as the second-most stressful life event on the inventory, just beneath death of a spouse. If you are going through a divorce, you need someone to help you manage this stress.

Your Coach Can Help You Break Down the Divorce Step-By Step

Many people greatly underestimate just how involved the divorce process is until they embark upon it. Valuing and dividing marital assets like real estate and investments, dealing with joint debt, determining a child custody arrangement, and dealing with other divorce issues can be so overwhelming it is paralyzing. An experienced divorce coach will know how to break down divorce obligations and concerns into small, achievable steps.

The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy reports that about 15 percent of married women and 25 percent of married men admit to extramarital affairs. An even higher percentage admit to non-sexual “emotional affairs.” While some marriages can survive adultery, an affair often spells the end of a marriage. If you are getting divorced because you or your spouse cheated, it is important to understand how this can affect the divorce.

Illinois Laws Regarding Marital Infidelity and Divorce

Each state has its own divorce laws. As of 2016, Illinois is a no-fault divorce state, meaning there are no fault-based grounds for divorce. When you fill out your divorce paperwork, you will cite “irreconcilable differences” as the grounds for the split. Infidelity does not automatically influence the court’s decisions regarding the division of marital property, spousal support, child custody, or other divorce issues. However, there are certain situations in which an affair can impact the divorce outcome.

Four Ways an Affair Can Potentially Affect Your Divorce Case

When a marriage ends because a spouse had an affair, it is important for both spouses to know how this may influence their divorce. An extramarital affair may lead to:

When a mother gives birth to a baby, there is no dispute as to the woman’s motherhood. However, determining paternity is not as simple. There are many different reasons that paternity may be unclear. Sometimes, a woman unexpectedly gets pregnant and is unsure of who the father is. Other times, an extramarital affair leads to confusion about paternity. A father may claim that he is the child’s father even if the mother knows this is untrue. Alternatively, a mother may believe that one man is the father of her child but he denies paternity.

If you are involved in a paternity dispute, you may understandably be filled with questions. Among these questions may be the question of whether DNA testing will be used to establish paternity.

Genetic Testing to Determine Who a Child’s Father Is

When paternity is unknown or disputed, one of the only ways to find out for sure is to conduct genetic testing. By evaluating the child’s DNA and comparing it to the presumed father’s DNA, paternity can be confirmed or denied with a negligible margin of error. According to the Cleveland Clinic, DNA paternity tests are 99.9 percent accurate.

When parents divorce, they must contend with many difficult issues. If the parents want to share custody, they just decide how to divide parenting duties. In Illinois, the time a parent spends caring for his or her child is called parenting time. A parent’s right to make decisions about his or her child’s education, medical care, and other important matters is referred to as the allocation of parental responsibilities. Divorcing parents who want to share parenting time must decide which days each parent will care for the child. They will also need to determine how to handle parenting time arrangements for birthdays, holidays, school vacations, and other special occasions.

Considerations for Shared Custody in Illinois

If you and your child’s other parent can agree on a parenting time schedule, you can design whatever schedule works best for you and your child. As you make your parenting time schedule make sure to consider:

• How your child wil bel transported to and from each parent’s home

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Whether it is a house, condominium, townhouse, or apartment, your home is more than just a living space and deciding how to handle ownership of the marital home during divorce is no easy task. Your home may have great personal and financial value to you and your family. As you explore your options in preparation for divorce, consider the following factors regarding the marital home.

How to Handle the Marital Home in Your Illinois Divorce

Real estate properties are classified as either marital or non-marital. Most of the time, the family home is a marital asset. However, if one spouse owned the home before getting married or inherited the home, it may be classified as non-marital property.

If your home is a marital asset, both spouses have a right to a share of the home’s value. In this case, you have a few different options:

When people think of abuse or domestic violence, they may picture a battered individual with visible injuries. Although physical abuse is one type of domestic violence, it is not the only type of abuse men and women may be subjected to. Threats, intimidation, scare tactics, stalking, and harassment are just some of the ways an abuser may hurt someone without physically injuring them.

Fortunately, Illinois law reflects the fact that abuse does not always involve punching or kicking. Other forms of psychological and emotional torment also fall under the category of abuse. Victims have the right to seek legal protection against abuse through an order of protection. In many cases, getting an order of protection is the best way to prevent further abuse, harassment, and violence from escalating.

Understanding The Timeline of Abuse

Abusive relationships often follow a pattern. At first, the relationship is pleasant and respectful. However, over time, the abuser becomes more and more controlling and violent. The abuser starts using verbal abuse like insults and yelling to destroy the victim’s self-esteem. He or she isolates the victim from friends and family, uses gaslighting and other psychological tactics to confuse the victim, or purposefully embarrasses the victim. These types of emotional and mental abuse tactics are often the precursor to physical violence. If you or a loved one are currently suffering from this type of non-physical abuse, do not wait until the situation escalates to take action.

Only a few short decades ago, telephones were landlines physically wired to a person’s home. Phones were used for making phone calls and little else. Nowadays, we use smartphones for calls, text messages, social media, searching the internet, shopping, and even paying our bills. Most people’s cell phones contain a shocking amount of personal information. Consequently, many divorcing spouses wonder how and when cell phone information can be used in divorce proceedings.

Gathering Text Message and Call Logs in a Divorce Case

The portion of the divorce in which both parties gather information is called discovery. Discovery often involves depositions, interrogatories, requests for production of documents, and other formal requests for information. Accessing evidence like tax documents or bank account statements is usually easier than gathering cell phone records. Unless a spouse willingly hands over cell phone data, which is unlikely in a contentious divorce, the most common way to get cell phone records is through a subpoena.

A subpoena is a request for information that must be followed by law. Some subpoenas require a third party to physically show up in court and present evidence or testimony. Others require a party to provide some type of evidence such as documents, records, or information. Divorce lawyers may issue subpoenas to cellular carrier companies like Verizon or T-Mobile requiring the companies to hand over cell phone data. However, cell phone companies can usually only provide records of when phone calls were made, who the calls were made to, and the duration of the call. The number and frequency of text messages may also be provided by the carrier, but a federal law prohibits cell phone carriers from divulging the actual content of the text messages in most cases.  

As high-income individuals getting divorced can attest, having money does not solve all of your problems in life. In fact, affluence can make divorce much more complex – especially if a spouse is not honest about income, assets, and debts. Forensic accounting is a process used in high-asset divorce cases to uncover hidden assets and other forms of fraud.

If you are getting divorced and suspect your spouse is transferring funds, concealing assets, misrepresenting income, or otherwise lying about money, forensic accounting may be useful in your divorce case.

Hidden Assets and Undisclosed Income in a Divorce

Spouses may use many different tactics to falsify financial information in a divorce. For example, a spouse who wants to avoid sharing assets with the other spouse in a divorce may hide money in offshore accounts or transfer funds to a co-conspirator. Some distort the value of the marital estate by undervaluing assets of great worth like antiques or fine art. Business owners may alter business financials to make the business appear less profitable than it actually is or use business investments to hide personal assets. These types of unlawful tactics undermine the divorce process and prevent the other spouse from receiving a fair divorce settlement or award. Financial fraud may reduce the amount of money a spouse receives in child support or spousal maintenance and lead to an inequitable division of marital assets.

In 2022, child support is calculated based on both of the parents’ net incomes. If the parents have a relatively equal amount of parenting time, the child support obligation is modified accordingly. Read on to learn more about how child support is calculated if parents share custody 50/50.

Parenting Time and Shared Parenting Scenarios

Physical custody of a child is now referred to as parenting time in Illinois, but the term custody is still used in informal settings. Divorcing parents are permitted and encouraged to develop a parenting time schedule that works for them. For example, in some families, one parent has the children on weekends and the other on weekdays. In other families, children stay with one parent the first and third weeks of the month and the other parent on the second and forth weeks of the month.

A shared parenting arrangement occurs when both parents have the children more than 40 percent of the time. This works out to 146 overnight visits a year. If you and your child’s other parent have 50/50 or near 50/50 custody, this is considered a shared parenting arrangement. It is important for you to understand how shared parenting arrangements influence child support obligations.

As high schools finish up their spring semesters, many young people have their sights set on college. As a parent, the prospect of your child attending university can be both exciting and nerve-racking. College gets more and more expensive with each passing year. Average tuition and fees for public schools currently averages over $10,000 for in-state schools and nearly $23,000 for out-of-state schools. Private schools are even more expensive, with an average annual tuition of approximately $38,000.

If you are divorced and your child is nearing college age, it is important to understand how Illinois law handles the division of college tuition and related expenses between divorced parents.

Divorced Parents May Be Required to Contribute to College Costs

Many divorced parents in Illinois are surprised to learn that the state can require parents to contribute to their child's college education. Illinois is one of the few states with this type of law on the books. While the constitutionality of the law has been called into question several times, the law still stands.

If you were recently married, but you regret it, you may be interested in getting the marriage annulled. Annulment is commonly portrayed in movies and television shows as a quick fix for couples wanting to end their marriage. However, annulment is more complicated than movies would lead you to believe. Annulments are only available in a narrow range of circumstances in Illinois. Couples who do not meet annulment criteria will need to end their marriages through divorce.

Annulment Criteria in Illinois

Many people assume that annulment is the same thing as divorce. However, these are completely different legal actions. An annulment declares a marriage invalid and makes it as if the marriage never happened. Divorce terminates a valid marriage.

Annulment is warranted under the following conditions:

Finances are often a key factor in divorce and family law disputes. For the court to make a determination about the division of assets and debts, child support, and other issues, the court needs accurate financial information from both parties. Unfortunately, not everyone is as forthcoming about financial information as they should be. Some people disclose only partial financial information or actively hide assets and income during family law cases to gain an unfair advantage.

If you are involved in a divorce, child support case, or another family law matter and you suspect that another party is lying about income, contact a family law attorney for help. Attorneys have various means of finding undisclosed income and hidden assets so any determination is based on factual financial information.

How People Hide Income in Family Law Cases

The simplest way to hide income in a divorce or family law case is to simply fail to disclose it. Hiding income is much easier for individuals who own businesses or are self-employed. Because there are no payroll stubs showing exactly what they made, they can easily lie about how much money they earn. Some people also get jobs “under the table” that pay cash and do not keep records of payments.

Marriages end for countless reasons. Some gradually break down over the course of years or decades. Other marriages end abruptly because a spouse has an affair or violates the other spouse’s trust. Sometimes, spouses simply fall out of love. If your marriage has reached the point of no return and divorce is imminent, there are things you can do now to make the divorce process easier.

Preparing for Divorce Can Help Make the Process Go More Smoothly

Divorce is a difficult process to go through, but preparing in advance can help you ready yourself to tackle divorce issues like property division, spousal maintenance, and child-related matters.

If you know that your marriage is beyond saving and you will soon divorce, here are six steps you can take to prepare yourself, your family, and your finances.

Being a parent is hard regardless of your marital status. But co-parenting kids with an ex comes with additional challenges. If you are planning to divorce or you are an unmarried parent sharing custody of your kids with an ex, you may already have experienced some of these difficulties. Parents may disagree about parenting time schedules, their child's education or participation in extracurricular activities, healthcare, and much more.

Every co-parenting relationship is bound to experience problems, but there are steps you can take to lessen co-parenting disagreements.  

Disagreements About Child-Related Issues

Parents often have strong opinions about what is best for their children. When parents disagree on what is in their child's best interests, the situation can quickly devolve into an argument.

Domestic violence victims in Illinois have the option to get an order of protection to protect themselves, their children, and their property. A protection order is often the first step in leaving an abusive marriage or relationship. Protection orders can also provide legal protection if the abuse is at the hands of an ex-romantic partner, current or former household member, or family member. Unfortunately, many domestic violence victims are unaware of their rights and options under Illinois law. This leads them to suffer in silence and without the legal protection they need. Read on to learn about protection order hearings and what you can do if you are ready to get a protection order for yourself or a loved one.

Emergency Protection Orders May Be “Ex Parte” Orders

The first step in seeking legal protection against an abusive or harassing individual is an Emergency Order of Protection (EOP). In Illinois, EOPs are offered on an “ex parte” basis which means that the respondent (the subject of the order) does not need to be present. You can get an EOP from the court based solely on your testimony. The abuser’s presence is not required. Often, domestic violence victims are able to get an EOP on the same day on which they requested it.

Protection Order Hearings and Plenary Orders of Protection

When someone gets an EOP, the court enters a hearing date for a longer-lasting protection order called a Plenary Order of Protection. This hearing is more traditional. Both parties are expected to show up to the hearing. The judge will give the abuse victim and the abuser the chance to make their case. Often, the parties’ attorneys speak on their behalf during the hearing. Each side will be given the opportunity to provide testimony, call witnesses to the stand, and submit evidence to the court for consideration. After the hearing, the judge makes a decision. He or she will either grant the Plenary Order of Protection or deny the request based on the testimony and evidence presented.

If you are getting divorced, there are probably a thousand questions running through your head at any moment. Divorce can have major personal and financial implications. One issue many people worry about is what happens to debts in a divorce. You or your spouse may have student loans, credit card debts, personal loans, a mortgage, and other debts. What happens to this debt when you get divorced? Who is ultimately liable for debts accumulated during a marriage? The answers to these questions vary. An experienced divorce lawyer can help you understand your financial rights and responsibilities during your divorce and the best way to protect your financial interests.

Is the Debt Marital Debt or Non-Marital Debt?

The first question you will need to ask yourself regarding debt is whether the debt is considered marital debt or non-marital debt. Ideally, spouses will have signed a prenuptial agreement that clearly explains which debts and assets are marital and non-marital. However, if there is no such agreement, the debt classification will be determined by Illinois law.

Per Illinois law, marital debts are those debts which were acquired during the marriage. Non-marital debt is obtained before the couple weds. However, there may be exceptions. If a debt was used exclusively for the benefit of one spouse, one could argue that it is non-marital debt even if it was accrued during the marriage.

When divorcing spouses share children together, the divorce process becomes much more complicated. In addition to financial matters like property division, the couple must also address child-related concerns like child custody and child support. Read on to learn about some of the top questions Illinois parents have about parenting time and what you can do to get personalized legal guidance during your divorce case.

How is Parenting Time Different Than Child Custody?

One of the most complicated parts of the divorce process is navigating the sea of confusing legal terms and language. Illinois law no longer uses the term child custody. Instead, child-related matters are broken down into the allocation of parental responsibilities and parenting time. Parental responsibilities refer to the parents’ right to make decisions about their child’s education and other important matters. Parenting time is the time that parents spend with their children. The parents will include their parenting time schedule in their parenting plan and submit it to the court for approval.

What Can I Do to Modify Our Parenting Time Order?

Changing work schedules and other issues may require a modification to the parenting time schedule. If you want to modify your parenting time order, you will need to show that there is a substantial change in circumstances and that modification is in the child’s best interests.

Taxes are probably the last thing on your mind if your marriage is ending. You may be more focused on the immediate financial implications of the split, the divorce’s effect on your children, ownership of the marital home, and other issues. However, divorce can have major tax implications for both spouses. Read on to learn about some of the top tax-related issues Illinois couples encounter when they divorce.

Tax Implications of Property Division

You and your spouse will need to value and divide your shared property in your divorce. The way you distribute property can have certain tax advantages and disadvantages. Usually, property transfers during divorce are non-taxable events. However, each case is different, and you may decide to forgo the opportunity for tax-free transfers if there is an advantage to doing so. There can also be major tax implications associated with retirement assets and liabilities like capital losses and charitable deductions.

Choosing Your Tax Filing Status  

Usually, the tax filing status you should select is fairly obvious. However, it can be confusing if you were married for part of the year and divorced for part of the year. The IRS states that a couple’s filing status should be based on their marital status on December 31. If your divorce is not finalized by the end of the year, you may need to decide whether to file jointly or separately.