A divorce in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois can take as little as two weeks and as long as three years. It all depends. Let’s work through what can make the divorce process take so much time.
A Divorce With A Full Agreement
If you come to your divorce lawyer with a full agreement between both parties you have an uncontested divorce. Your lawyer can prepare all the final documents: a judgment of dissolution of marriage, an allocation of parental responsibilities, a marital settlement agreement and a certification and agreement of counsel.
Preparing these Illinois divorce documents when there is a full agreement, also known an uncontested divorce, usually takes at least two weeks.
The nature of family law is that there are a lot of emergencies which pre-empt previously scheduled projects. Therefore, I always tell my divorce clients that it will take me and my staff two weeks to prepare the final documents.
Once the final documents are prepared we will read and review them with you. You may have proposed changes which will affect how long the process will take. When you’re ready, you’ll sign the approved final divorce documents and then we’ll forward them to your spouse. You may hand them directly to your final spouse, we may mail them or we may send them to your spouse’s presumed attorney. You know your spouse and his or her reactions so we leave the issue of presentment to you. If your spouse has an attorney, however, we always send the final documents to the attorney for review.
Upon receiving signed final documents from your spouse, we will file the documents and request a court date to finalize your divorce. A court date is usually granted two weeks from the date of filing the final divorce docuemnts. The court date will depend on when the judge you’ve been assigned to is available for prove-ups. This final court date is called a “prove up”. A prove up involves reading the final documents (usually summarizing) and confirming with the petitioner (the party who filed) that everything in the documents are correct. The other party may be present but is not required to be present. I always recommend that the other party be present as the judge may have additional questions or modifications to the final document.
A Contested Divorce With Children
Contested divorce cases can take much longer to resolve than uncontested divorces can take.
If the parties to an Illinois divorce have children and cannot come to an agreement on their own, the parties must go to mediation. “Parties and their representatives are required to attend mediation sessions, but are not compelled to reach an agreement.” Cook County Court Rule 13.4(e)(i)(a)
“For the following categories of contested issues, mediation is mandatory unless an impediment to mediation exists: (1) initial determinations of allocation of parental responsibilities; (2) modification of allocation of parental responsibilities; (3) relocation of the child; 4) non-parent visitation and third party allocation of parental responsibilities.” Cook County Court Rule 13.4(e)(ii)(b)
Mediation can take a few weeks if you hire a private mediator who is immediately available. If both parties live within Cook County the parties may use the Cook County Mediator which is free of charge but often can take upwards of 3 months to get a first appointment.
If the mediation does not result in a full agreement, the children will typically be assigned an attorney of their own, a guardian ad litem, who will conduct an investigation and report to the court what is in the best interests of the children.
All matters that involve children must be resolved within 18 months.
“All allocation of parental responsibilities proceedings under this rule in the trial court shall be resolved within 18 months from the date of service of the petition or complaint to final order. In the event this time limit is not met, the trial court shall make written findings as to the reason(s) for the delay.” Illinois Supreme Court Rule 922
A Contested Divorce Regarding Financial Issues
If the disagreements between the parties are financial, then the parties must engage in discovery. Discovery is the exchange of documents. It starts with exchanging the Illinois Financial Affidavit. Along with requesting a financial affidavit, either person has the power to request any other relevant documents and submit a series of 25 questions called “interrogatories.” The other party then has 30 days to answer these requests until you can send them a warning letter called a “201(k)” letter. Seven days after the 201(k) letter, you can file a motion to compel the other party to produce those documents.
As you can see, this is a time-intensive process…and this is only for the first request for documents. The returned documents may reveal bank accounts and other items you had no idea about and need to be investigated further. This starts the whole process of requesting, sending warning letters and filing motions to compel all over again.
Presumably, the documents uncovered by discovery will be presumed by both parties to be valid and true. If this is the case, when discovery is completed by both parties, a pre-trial may be requested at the next court date. If the documents are false or misleading, a whole process begins to find the true documents and punish the party who produced misleading documents.
Pre-trials
A pre-trial is a meeting with the judge, usually in the judge’s chambers, summarizing the facts of the case and the judge responds by saying, “If everything you both allege is true, I would probably rule x, y, and z”.
This pre-trial results in merely a recommendation (unless you stipulate in advance to the recommendation being binding). You are not obligated to accept the recommendation and you may request a trial where all the evidence will be heard as though it were not agreed upon. Most judges schedule trials 3 to 6 months after the pre-trial.
How To Speed Up Your Divorce in Chicago, Illinois
As you can see, there is a recurring theme here: the longer you disagree, the longer the divorce case takes. This is partly why 95% of divorces result in a settlement.
There is an exception to all these rules. If one party has a health emergency and needs to get divorced first before they get their affairs in order that party can request a bifurcated divorce. A bifurcated divorced is where the dissolution of marriage gets entered but all the details of the divorce, ex: division of property, get reserved for later resolution.
That being said, our office has handled hundreds of divorces quickly and affordably to the point where we have a highly automated system to take you through the above steps in the fastest most transparent manner possible.
Finally, there are a variety of strategies that your spouse could employ to delay your Chicago Illinois divorce that your divorce lawyer should be prepared for.
To learn more about the strategy we would recommend for you, please contact our Chicago, Illinois law office to schedule a free consultation.