“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” – Albert Einstein.
Has anyone really been surprised that they got a divorce? I don’t think so. Instead, couples facing divorce plan for months or years for their divorce. They organize their schedule around the kids. They build up an emergency divorce fund. They compile evidence of their spouse’s misdeeds. People even try to hide assets they believe
When you know you are getting divorced, you don’t need to wait for a court to order a division of assets to start dividing items. Couples usually each claim the car they were driving, their clothes and even pets well before the divorce decree is entered. For whatever reason, dividing a bank account in advance
In the panic of considering a divorce in Illinois, both parties will be quick to consider the “worst case scenario” and research what they are each entitled to. Inevitably, the parties to a potential divorce specifically want to know what the more vulnerable member is entitled to. This party is usually the wife. Typically, the
While a divorce is usually about who gets what asset, most people have a mix of assets and debts. A married couple’s debts are also divided in an Illinois divorce. Illinois divorce courts “shall divide the marital property without regard to marital misconduct in just proportions” 750 ILCS 503(d) “It is well settled that marital debts as well
***Updated in March 2021 to reflect the massive interest in cryptocurrencies*** Millions of people have purchased Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Millions of people have also gotten divorced. Therefore, several Bitcoin owners got divorced and had to address the division of their marital assets…which include cryptocurrencies which are difficult to verify and difficult to value. Disclosing
When I was a child in the early 80s, I remember adults discussing inflation and its effects. Then, the issue of inflation disappeared for 40 years. Now, inflation is back and it is impacting all of our assets, incomes and expenses. Everyone needs to factor inflation into their future financial plans, especially people who are
When you marry someone, you make a promise to them that will last years and years. When you take out a mortgage, you also make a promise that will last years and years. Extracting yourself from the obligations of a mortgage often goes hand in hand with extracting yourself from a marriage through a divorce.
One of the most common scenarios in an Illinois divorce is finding that one spouse has non-marital property from before the marriage. The allegedly non-marital property is usually a house that both people live in, pay for, and keep repaired over the course of years. Of course, after a divorce has been filed, the owner
A house is often a married couple’s greatest asset. How they treated that house during the course of their marriage will determine the value of the house and the subsequent allocation of that value during an Illinois divorce. Home improvements can be a factor in determining the equitable distribution of marital assets in an Illinois
Illinois family law has a lot of buzzwords that divorce lawyers understand (or pretend to) that regular people can’t seem to wrap their head around. “Constructive trusts” is one of those buzzwords. If you search for “constructive trust” in the Illinois statutes, you’ll come back with exactly one instance of the term…which is just a