“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” – Albert Einstein.
A house is a peculiar asset in an Illinois divorce. A house is usually the biggest asset and the biggest debt that two married people share. Moreover, a house’s mortgage is usually the biggest monthly expense the parties share. Furthermore, the house is where the parties and their children live. The house is the setting
Tax returns are a record of an individual’s income that are presented to the United States federal government. If the tax returns are not complete and factual, the filer can face a myriad of penalties and possible criminal prosecution. So, tax returns are an extremely reliable source of information in an Illinois divorce. Understanding a
In the United States there are thirteen different unions that represent railroad workers with a total of over 140,000 members. These railroad workers do not pay social security taxes. Instead, they pay taxes to a separate fund administered by the Railroad Retirement Board, an independent government agency. The Railroad Retirement Board issues annuity payments to
Almost all states allow property brought into the marriage to remain non-marital. Thus, divorce law allows the person who brought the property into the marriage to take that property out at the end of the divorce. Illinois is no exception. The rules for determining what assets have remained non-marital throughout the course of a marriage
Mortgages typically consume 25 to 33 percent of a household’s total income. A mortgage is usually a household’s biggest expense. Additionally, mortgages are usually tied to a household’s biggest asset, the marital home. Failure to pay a mortgage means a married couple’s biggest asset is at risk of foreclosure. For all these reasons, the mortgage
The point of a divorce is to unwind a couple’s affairs while establishing and memorializing the remaining obligations between the two parties. The “unwind” part is simply the division of the party’s marital assets. The “ongoing obligations” is virtually everything else in a divorce: alimony, child support, parenting time. Even the division of marital debts
There’s an old saying: “lucky in life, unlucky in love” which refers to the phenomenon of reasonable, successful people who fall in love with people who are constantly prone to poor decisions. Maybe this odd couple dynamic is what keeps a relationship fun. But, when that relation is fraying the reasonable spouse may be worried
Divorce is about unwinding two people’s professional and personal relationship. Each party to the divorce keeps certain assets and is assigned responsibility for certain debts. But some things are either both an asset and a debt or kind of neither, like a timeshare. So, what happens to a timeshare in an Illinois divorce? What Is
Lawyers love to use acronyms and buzzwords to shorten long phrases like “Qualified Domestic Relations Order” which is commonly referred to as a “QDRO.” So, what is a QDRO, exactly, in an Illinois divorce? QDROs are court orders that allow for 1) the division of a tax-deferred retirement account and 2) the preservation of that
Many people don’t wait for the divorce process to officially end before dating. The wisdom of dating during a divorce in Illinois is debatable. If you or your spouse are actively dating other people while unwinding your relationship through an Illinois divorce there are things both parties to an Illinois divorce need to know. Is