Recent Blog Posts
How Can I Change My Child Support Order?
Child support payments allow divorced or unmarried parents to effectively split the costs associated with raising children. In Illinois, the amount a parent pays in child support is largely based on the difference between the parents’ net incomes. When there is a significant change in a parent’s financial circumstances, the needs of the child, or in the way the parents divide parenting time, a child support order modification may be necessary. However, changing your child support order is not always as simple as it may seem.
Calculating Child Support Payments in Illinois
Illinois child support orders are determined using the Income Shares method. First, the parents’ individual net incomes are added together to find the combined net income. The combined net income is then compared to a chart created by the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services to find the “basic child support obligation.” This figure represents the total financial support for which both parents are responsible. The basic child support obligation is allocated to the parents based on their respective shares of the combined net income. In shared parenting situations, meaning each parent has at least 146 overnights with the child each year, the amount the obligor parent pays in child support is reduced by his or her allotment of parenting time.
Can I Still File for Divorce in Kane County Amidst COVID-19?
With COVID-19 and social distancing orders still duly present throughout the U.S., especially in Illinois, many families have spent months together in close-quarters. For some, this time in quarantine has brought spouses and their children closer than ever. For others, the time together has only reaffirmed their thoughts of filing for divorce. Because the pandemic came on so suddenly, with businesses closing their doors at a moment’s notice, those who were considering divorce or were even in the middle of divorce proceedings may have had to put their plans on hold for the past few months.
Luckily, attorneys were deemed essential workers and many law firms remained open, either physically or virtually, to continue working with clients. Courthouses, including Kane County courts, closed for a period of time to protect their employees and avoid infecting those coming in and out of the courthouse for their legal proceedings. As Illinois public health orders have progressed from one phase to the next, the Kane County courthouses have reopened at limited capacity.
I Have Just Been Granted Supervised Visitation – What Now?
In most divorce and parenting cases, the court wants to keep both parents in the child’s life. What this looks like, exactly, varies from family to family. For parents who both have played an integral role in the child’s upbringing, the court will attempt to split parenting time equitably, though not necessarily equally. Most arrangements will have one parent keep the children throughout the week, with the other parent caring for the kids over the weekend. However, some families do not have healthy enough relationships to have this type of parenting plan. In the instance that a child’s safety is at risk, the court will need to reconsider what these parenting plans will look like. Depending on the details of the situation, the court may grant supervised visitation in order to keep the parent-child relationship alive while protecting the child from potential harm.
Is Filing for Divorce Right for Me?
Recognizing that your marriage may be coming to an end can take you months, if not years, to put into words. You have likely felt your relationship deteriorating over time but have not been ready to accept that ending the marriage may be what is best for you and your spouse. Before filing for divorce, many couples will live apart to gauge their feelings towards their spouse and their life together. In fact, Illinois may require you to live separately for six months before you are legally able to divorce if your spouse does not agree to the divorce. With the thought of divorce swirling in your head, you are likely having a number of feelings come over you all at once — remembering the good times you have had together, but feeling unsure if this outweighs your current discontent. Every marriage is different and there is no “right” or “wrong” answer, but divorce experts have recognized a few common signs that may point towards a need for divorce.
What Can You Do If Your Co-Parent Violates Your Parenting Plan?
A parenting plan created during a divorce is more than a simple agreement between two parents. It is a legally binding document that outlines how parenting time with the children will be divided and who has the right to make decisions about the children. A parent who ignores the terms of the agreement is violating a contract and could be held legally responsible for their actions. How should you respond to a violation of your parenting plan? Should you immediately take your co-parent to court after they break your agreement? Filing a court order is usually not the first step you should take when dealing with a violation.
How Might Your Co-Parent Violate Your Plan?
The first thing that comes to mind with a parenting plan violation is not following your parenting schedule. Your co-parent may be late in dropping off the children or coming to pick them up, which throws off your schedule. However, they could also violate the agreement by making a decision without consulting you first or not following your agreed-upon rules for raising the children, as long as those rules are explicitly stated in the plan.
How to Use Social Media to Tell Others About Your Divorce
One of the many uncomfortable tasks that you have following your decision to divorce is when and how to tell others about it. You need to break the news personally to your children and close family members. Some friends may also deserve to hear the news directly from you. What about the other people you interact with on a regular basis? It could be emotionally tiresome to repeat your divorce conversation with all of your friends and other social acquaintances. Some couples will instead announce their divorce on social media. Before you decide whether a social media announcement would be right for you, you should consider the potential benefits and pitfalls.
Advantages of a Social Media Announcement
The most appealing part of announcing your divorce through social media is that it removes the pressure of having numerous in-person conversations about your divorce. Beyond that, a well-executed social media announcement can help you control your public message about your divorce:
What to Do If You Cannot Afford to Pay Child Support
Not all cases of a parent failing to pay child support involve “deadbeat” parents who are trying to shirk their financial responsibility. Sometimes, a parent cannot afford the payments due to circumstances that are out of their control, such as:
- Losing their job
- Suffering an injury that prevents them from working
- Being forced to make a major purchase or go into debt because of an emergency
If you find yourself unable to keep up with your child support payments, you need to present the problem in court and see if you can reduce your payments.
What Not to Do
You can be found in contempt of a court order if you do not pay child support, even if you cannot afford the payments. Do not assume that it is okay to miss a payment without saying anything to your co-parent. Regardless of your financial means, you are still knowingly violating your child support order. You should also avoid creating an informal agreement with your co-parent where you reduce your child support payments or defer payment. A family law court will not recognize changes to your child support payments that are made outside of the court-approved order. An informal agreement will likely not protect you if your co-parent files a complaint against you for not paying child support.
Preserving Your Retirement Benefits During Your Divorce
Divorce has a way of affecting every aspect of your life – including your retirement plans. Getting a divorce can deplete your retirement savings, disrupt your scheduled contributions, and throw off your planned retirement age. Those who are most affected are people going through a grey divorce, which is when people age 50 and older divorce after several years of marriage. A person in their 50s has less time to adjust their plans before they retire. No matter your age, divorce does not have to decimate your retirement plan if you are prepared during your negotiations:
- Prioritize Retirement Benefits: The value of your retirement account is marital property that you include in the division of assets. In order to keep valuable property, such as your marital home, you could agree to give up a portion of your retirement benefits or forgo your claim to your spouse’s benefits. Making this deal may be short-sighted because you are depleting your retirement plan and paying for maintenance and property taxes on the home. It may make more sense to downsize your home and preserve your retirement benefits.
What Are the Limits of Recreational Marijuana in Illinois?
After months of anticipation and preparation, recreational marijuana is now legal in Illinois. It is an exciting time for those who enjoy the use of cannabis, businesses that will profit from its sale, and residents whose previous marijuana possession convictions are being expunged. However, there are still limits to marijuana possession and use, just as with any controlled substance. Some marijuana laws are more restrictive than laws for alcohol and tobacco. If you are unaware of the rules for recreational marijuana, you may be at risk of facing drug-related criminal charges.
Possession
Firstly, you must be at least age 21 to possess marijuana in Illinois. There are also limits to the amount of cannabis you can possess:
- 30 grams of cannabis flower
- 5 grams of cannabis concentrate
- 500 milligrams of THC in a cannabis-infused product
How to Know Whether You Could Benefit from a Prenuptial Agreement
Nobody who is about to get married wants to think about the possibility that they may one day get divorced. You create a prenuptial agreement with that scenario in mind, which makes asking for a prenup an awkward conversation to have with your fiance. For some people, it is a worthwhile conversation to have given their individual circumstances. The agreement can decide how you will divide your marital properties and pay spousal maintenance at a time when it is easier to negotiate with each other than it would be during a divorce. Creating a prenuptial agreement would be particularly helpful if any of the following applies to you:
- There Is an Income Gap Between You and Your Partner: When one spouse is the breadwinner in a relationship, the other spouse becomes financially dependent upon the marriage. The solution in the event of a divorce is spousal maintenance paid to the lower-income spouse, but the higher-income spouse is likely to try to minimize those payments. By including spousal maintenance in the prenuptial agreement, the lower-income spouse has more certainty about the amount of financial support they would receive after a divorce.
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