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Recent Blog Posts
How to Stop Harassment During Your Divorce
Getting a divorce can cause uncomfortable interactions between you and your spouse. That behavior sometimes escalates to the point of harassment from your spouse. Fortunately, you can file for an order of protection against your spouse if they are continually harassing you. How do you know when your spouse’s behavior qualifies as harassment? You should explain your spouse’s behavior in detail to your divorce attorney, who can advise you on whether a court order could stop that behavior and what you need to do in order to receive that order.
Harassment in Divorce
Illinois defines harassment as conduct that knowingly and unnecessarily causes a reasonable person to feel distressed. Harassment in a divorce is usually verbal abuse made in person or via electronic communication. Common examples include:
What Protections Does a Disabled Person Receive in a Divorce?
The decision to divorce may be more difficult than normal if you are someone with a disability. Though you may be unhappy in your marriage, you may also worry about whether you will be able to support yourself after a divorce. You may rely on your spouse’s income and health insurance if you are unable to work or are limited in your ability. If you have children, you may wonder whether your disability will limit your parenting time. Your disability does not have to trap you in an unhealthy marriage. Illinois divorce laws can help support you financially and protect your parental rights.
Support Payments
In any divorce, a person who is financially dependent on their spouse will usually receive spousal maintenance to support them as they adjust to life on their own. Spousal maintenance is particularly crucial for someone with a disability because they may:
Why Some Couples Choose Legal Separation Over Divorce
Filing for divorce is a serious and final decision to make about your marriage. Even when couples know that they are unhappy in their marriages, they may be unsure about whether they want to go as far as divorce. One alternative that couples in Illinois have is filing for legal separation. With a legal separation, you can act as if you are divorced without ending your marriage. If you decide you want to stay together, you can simply end the separation agreement. If you decide to end your marriage, you can file for divorce to make your separation permanent.
Why Should You Use Legal Separation?
Couples can separate from each other at any time without needing any official documents. However, they may lack legal protection when it comes to their individual property and parental rights. A separation agreement can work similarly to a divorce agreement, allowing you to settle on issues such as:
How Much Child Support Do You Pay if You Become Unemployed?
If you are one of the millions of Americans who have recently lost their jobs, you are understandably concerned about your ability to pay for living expenses. For some adults, child support is part of their monthly expenses. Fortunately, you do not have to continue paying the same amount towards child support if you have become unemployed. By requesting a modification of your child support payments, you can reduce your payments to something more manageable, though it is unlikely that you could ever get it reduced to nothing.
Changing Child Support
During a divorce or separation, Illinois calculates child support payments based on the parents’ comparative incomes. Your combined incomes help determine how much you both should be spending on child-related expenses each month, and your comparative incomes determine what percentage of those expenses you will each pay for. You can request an immediate modification of child support if you have a change of financial circumstances, such as losing your job. If the court grants your request, your child support payments will be reduced if you are the paying parent, or the payments you receive will increase if you are the recipient parent. There are a few conditions to the modification that you need to understand:
Five Factors When Dividing Vehicles in a Divorce
Unless you live in an area with a robust public transportation system, your vehicle is one of the most essential properties that you own. Thus, your car is one of the more important properties that you will include in your division of property during a divorce. The division may seem straight-forward if you own two vehicles. You each will get one vehicle. However, there are several issues related to your vehicles that you need to consider before completing your divorce:
- Is the Vehicle a Marital or Separate Property?: If you purchased the vehicle during your marriage with your shared income, then it is marital property. It may be separate property if you purchased it before your marriage, you received it as a gift, or you managed to pay for it with money that is separate from your marital assets. However, a vehicle you purchased before your marriage can become marital property if your spouse has helped you repay the loan on the vehicle.
Can Sexual Dysfunction Lead to an Illinois Divorce?
Can Sexual Dysfunction Lead to an Illinois Divorce?
There are many reasons that a marriage can end in divorce. Some couples may find that they want different things in life or that they are not happy together anymore. Other couples may become so distant with each other that one spouse strays outside of their marriage. However, that is not the only sex-related issue that can lead to divorce. In some cases, sexual dysfunction can also be a reason for the split.
Understanding Sexual Dysfunction
Sexual dysfunction can occur with either spouse, though many falsely believe that this is only experienced by males. Sometimes, sexual dysfunction can manifest in men if they have difficulty or inability to maintain an erection. Women may experience pain during intercourse, making it unbearable to have relations with their partner. Sexual dysfunction can be difficult for many couples to deal with and it can often cause other issues in the marriage. If either spouse is experiencing sexual dysfunction, it can lead to a pattern of anxiety, avoidance, or abstinence from sex, damaging the marriage in the process.
Can Sexual Dysfunction Lead to Divorce?
There are several factors that comprise a healthy marriage, one of which may be sexual intimacy. How important sex is to marriage depends on the couple and the stage they are at in their lives. For couples that place high importance on their sexual activity, sexual dysfunction can strain a relationship and, in some cases, contribute towards the decision to get divorced. Examples of sexual dysfunction include:
- Erectile dysfunction
- Impotency
- Sudden loss of sex drive
- Medical conditions that make physical contact uncomfortable
- An emotional trauma that causes a fear of intimacy
While you have every right to divorce because of an unsatisfying sexual relationship, you should understand all of the consequences of divorce before you make this important decision.
How Does Sexual Dysfunction Factor into Marital Law?
It is unnecessary to cite sexual dysfunction when filing for divorce because the only reason that Illinois accepts for getting a divorce is irreconcilable differences, which you do not have to explain. If you are looking to annul your marriage instead of divorce, one of the reasons you can cite is that your spouse cannot have sexual intercourse. However, you need to prove that your spouse knew about this sexual dysfunction and withheld that information from you before you married.
Illinois Does Not Recognize Palimony, Shared Property Rights of Cohabitants
“Palimony” is a term sometimes used after a couple has ended a long-term relationship in which they lived together without marriage. There are different definitions for palimony because it is not an official legal term but a play on words using “pal” and “alimony.” The basic definition is that it is the equivalent of spousal maintenance for cohabiting couples. Some expand that definition to include each party’s right to shared properties from the relationship. Illinois residents need to know that the state does not recognize palimony as a right between unmarried couples but that they can establish property claims by creating a cohabitation agreement.
Palimony Rulings
A 1979 Illinois Supreme Court ruling on the case of Hewitt v. Hewitt is often cited as a landmark decision that set the precedent on issues such as palimony. Since the early 1900s, Illinois has outlawed common law marriage, a practice that recognizes long-term domestic partners as effectively married. In the 1979 case, the Supreme Court found that cohabitation does not grant people the same rights to property and financial support as they would receive if they had been married. The Supreme Court was asked to reconsider this ruling in 2016 with the case of Blumenthal v. Brewer but upheld its original decision. Because of these rulings, cohabitants living in Illinois have no legal claim to palimony because it would give them the same benefits as spousal maintenance.
Three Business Valuation Methods for Your Divorce
If you are a business owner who is getting divorced, you will need to conduct a professional valuation of your business. A business is a marital property if you started or purchased it during your marriage. Even if you have owned the business since before you were married, it may have become marital property because you invested personal assets into it. Business valuations are complicated because there are multiple approaches to valuation and several aspects of a business that you must consider when calculating its value. There are three general approaches to business valuation, each with their own strengths:
- Income-Based Approach: The most popular method of business valuation, this approach values a business based on the earnings that it is able to generate. The business appraiser looks at the business’s past earnings and projects the future earnings, based on trends and accounting for risks.
Understanding the Role of Temporary Orders in an Illinois Divorce
When a couple decides they are getting a divorce, it is not uncommon for one spouse to willingly move out of the home. While this makes the most sense for many couples, it can also raise concerns for some. How can you make sure your spouse is still contributing to household expenses? How do you make sure your children still see their other parent? When this happens, you have two options: come to an agreement about how expenses and child custody will be handled for the time being or go to court to ask for a temporary order to protect yourself and your family.
If you are able to, coming to an agreement with your spouse about how these things will be handled during the divorce process is usually favorable. In some situations, however, this is not feasible. In these cases, your best bet may be to get temporary court orders that you and your spouse must abide by. Temporary orders can help you address some of your immediate concerns while your divorce is going on, and they will last until your divorce is finalized. Here are a few issues you can petition the court to decide using temporary orders:
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