CHICAGO DIVORCE LAWYER ARTICLES
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." - Albert Einstein.
"The rules of court we have promulgated are not aspirational. They are not suggestions. They have the force of law, and the presumption must be that they will be obeyed and enforced as written." Bright v. Dicke, 652 N.E.2d 275 (1995)
"[E]veryone is presumed to know the law and ignorance of the law excuses no one" Jones v. Board of Education of the City of Chicago, 2013 IL App (1st) 122437
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In Illinois, alimony is now called “maintenance.” An Illinois divorce court is empowered to award maintenance during an Illinois divorce. “[T]he court may grant a maintenance award for either spouse in amounts and for periods of time as the court deems just, without regard to marital misconduct, and the maintenance may be paid from the income or property of the other spouse.” 750 ILCS 5/504(a) How Maintenance Gets Awarded In…
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Illinois requires that the non-custodial parent (the parent who has the child less nights a year) pay the other parent child support. This amount is determined by an arcane chart based on both parents’ incomes and the number of children they both share. Modifications are then made based on who pays the child’s daycare, health insurance and whether the non-custodial parent has 40% or more of the overnights. The final…
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Divorce law is one of the broadest fields of law. A divorce lawyer needs to know everything from how to value a privately held business to how to determine what a substantial change in circumstances is regarding the best interests of a step-child. In order to keep all these rules straight in our heads, divorce lawyers, like all professionals, use esoteric buzzwords to refer to specific concepts. One of those…
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Divorce is difficult and it is important to have the support of family. When a couple gets divorced it is very common for their parents to be supportive financially as well as emotionally. The nature of this support is often characterized as “a loan” so that the money doesn’t appear to be marital property or income to the divorcing child. How does an Illinois divorce court treat loans from parents…
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Sooner or later, during your Illinois divorce, you will attend a friendly status call where a party will ask that their motion be set for hearing. The judge will pause and then ask, “Will this be an evidentiary hearing?” The counsel requesting the hearing will either say, “we can just pre-try it,” “the hearing will be summary in nature,” or “it will be a full evidentiary hearing, judge.” What is…
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