Posted on July 06, 2019 in Divorce and Finances

Having good credit helps when you are responsible for supporting yourself after a divorce. It gives you the option of borrowing money to finance your immediate needs, such as purchasing a new home. Bad credit history or no credit history are obstacles to your financial stability but can be overcome with proper planning. Two of your goals during your divorce should be to protect or repair your credit and to work on building your individual credit.

Existing Credit

You need a current credit report to understand your financial situation, which you can purchase from a major credit bureau. Your current credit rating is likely based on:

• Marital debts;
• Business debts; and
• Debts from before your marriage.

Equitably dividing your marital debts is part of the divorce process. Marital debts are personal debts created during the marriage. With business debts, both spouses may be liable if they co-signed on the debt agreement or the business is not a limited liability company. Debts that predate a marriage are not shared during the divorce unless the spouse agreed to assume liability for the debt.

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 Posted on July 03, 2019 in Divorce

Sometimes, your body seems to have a knack for knowing exactly the wrong time for you to get sick. During a divorce would be one of those times because being sick could interfere with you completing the process while balancing your work and personal responsibilities. Of course, feeling ill during high-stress events is not always a coincidence. The constant stress can weaken your immune system or cause its own maladies. Some people going through divorce lead an unhealthy lifestyle because of how hectic their lives are. Though you may think you cannot afford to be sick, you must take steps to protect your health:

1. Know When to See a Doctor: Sometimes, a little time off is what you need to help yourself feel better. However, you may need to schedule a doctor’s appointment if your symptoms are particularly bad, persist for a couple of days or reoccur somewhat frequently. Do not assume that your illness will go away on its own. Your symptoms could be from a minor bug or a major illness. You will not know unless you see a doctor.

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 Posted on June 30, 2019 in Divorce and Finances

When parents divorce, at least one of them must find a new home for them to live with their children. In some cases, both parents are searching for a home if they sell their marital home. It can be difficult to purchase a house as a single parent. You must find a home that is within your price range but still meets your family’s needs. It may also be more difficult to receive a mortgage as a single parent. To purchase a home, you will need to plan ahead and use the resources available from your divorce agreement.

Assess Your Situation

Before hitting the housing market, you must identify what you need and what you can afford. Your needs may depend on how many children you have and their ages. Young children of the same gender may be fine with sharing a room, but older children need more privacy and space. Your housing expenses are a major component of your budget after divorce. Besides your job income and living expenses, you must consider divorce-related assets and expenses, such as:

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 Posted on June 28, 2019 in Divorce

Everyone thinks that marriage is forever — and for many people it is. But for some Americans, divorce is still very much a reality. Depending on the source, the divorce rate has lingered around 40 to 50 percent for the past decade or so. Getting a divorce can turn your entire life upside down and can even change your financial situation for the worst. One thing you can do to protect yourself before you get to that point is to get a prenuptial agreement.

A prenuptial agreement is a legal document that you can use to dictate how certain things will be handled in the event of a divorce. This can be greatly beneficial in reducing the amount of conflict and the length of time it takes to complete a divorce if you and your spouse ever get to that point. In order for your prenuptial agreement to be enforceable and valid, there are certain things that are not permitted in a prenuptial agreement and certain rules and procedures you must follow when creating one. Here are a few mistakes you should avoid while creating your prenuptial agreement:

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 Posted on June 27, 2019 in Children and Divorce

The terms “parenting time” and “visitation” are sometimes loosely interchanged with each other when discussing the allocation of parental responsibilities after a divorce or separation. When the children spend the majority of their time with one parent, the other parent may feel like they are seeing the children only during weekend visits. However, visitation is different from parenting time, both in legal definition and concept. Saying that your children visit you is demeaning to your relationship with them.

Legal Meaning

Illinois revised its Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act to replace the words “child custody” with “the allocation of parental responsibilities.” Parental responsibilities are made up of:

• Decision-making, which is the right to decide important issues regarding the children; and

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 Posted on June 25, 2019 in Divorce

A bitter divorce can cause spouses to be angry and vindictive towards each other. Some spouses try to hurt each other in ways that range from petty to criminal acts. A common way to embarrass a spouse is to have the divorce notice served to them at their work, which is not illegal but still humiliating. A spouse may violate the law by posting “revenge porn” on the internet, which is a class 4 felony. From a legal perspective, online impersonation falls somewhere between the previous examples. Your spouse may not always be breaking the law by impersonating you, but catching your spouse in the act will hurt them during your divorce.

Online Impersonation

Illinois is not one of the few states that have created criminal laws that specifically prohibit online impersonation. Illinois has laws against identity theft, which is a form of impersonation that is used to steal assets or defraud others. Cases of online impersonation during a divorce often involve:

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 Posted on June 25, 2019 in Family Law

For many divorcing families, the topic that is always at the forefront of every decision is the children. For divorcing parents, a topic that often comes up is child support. In years prior, the calculations for child support were much more basic, but they did not always take into account the factors that more and more parents were dealing with, such as two incomes and shared parenting time. In today’s child support calculation process, more details are taken into consideration than ever before. This includes the amount of parenting time each parent has, the income of each parent, the cost of health insurance for the child, the cost of the child’s extracurricular activities and the cost of childcare. The calculation process can be difficult, but it is important to understand.

Determining the Basic Child Support Obligation

Before the amount that each parent should provide for support is determined, the basic child support obligation is calculated. This is the total finances that both parents should be providing their children each month. To find this, the gross monthly income is determined for each parent. Then, the corresponding value from the 2019 Gross to Net Income Conversion Table is taken, which is the parent’s net monthly income. These two incomes are then added together. The total of both parents’ incomes is used to find the amount that both parents should be using each month to provide for the child’s basic needs.

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 Posted on June 20, 2019 in Divorce

There are times when going through your divorce may test the limits of your patience, energy, and sanity. No one experiences divorce within a bubble. You are balancing your divorce with your personal and professional lives and trying not to let any of them collapse. If you fear that your divorce may overwhelm you, you should consider hiring a divorce coach to help you through the personal side of your divorce. Through your coaching sessions, you will learn several important facts that may help you cope:

1. You Need to Share Your Feelings: Suppressing your emotions builds up stress and may cause a breakdown. You need an outlet to talk about what is making you worried or upset. The trick is finding the right person to talk to. You want someone who is sympathetic yet emotionally detached from your divorce. A divorce coach or therapist is the ideal choice. If you want to talk to a family member or friend, make sure it is someone who has a calm and compassionate temperament. Your children should never be your outlet.

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 Posted on June 17, 2019 in Child Custody

Illinois assumes that both parents in a divorce should share parenting time of their child. This may not mean equal parenting time because courts prefer that one parent has the children for a majority of the time to create more stability. Still, both parents are encouraged to be active in their children’s lives beyond child support and basic obligations. Studies on children of divorce have shown that they benefit when each parent has at least 35 percent of the parenting time. They do better in school and are less likely to have long-lasting emotional issues. There are several reasons why shared parenting is more beneficial to children than when one parent has most or all of the parenting time:

1. The Children Develop Relationships with Both Parents: Conventional wisdom used to be that children primarily need their mothers when growing up, which left some fathers with limited contact with their children. However, a father is also an important figure in a child’s life, and children who do not develop a close relationship with their father may feel abandoned. To develop a relationship, fathers need more time with their children than a visit every other weekend, especially when the child is young.

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 Posted on June 12, 2019 in Divorce

Most divorces are settled between spouses without the need for a lengthy trial. Divorcees start with out-of-court negotiations because it is more beneficial to reach an agreement between each other than to force a judge to decide for them. Even if you are not completely satisfied with your divorce agreement, it may not be worth going to trial because:

• Litigation will cost you more time and money;
• The money you spend on litigation could be greater than what you would have lost by accepting your spouse’s proposal; and
• You could spend all of that time and money only for the judge to side with your spouse or reach a decision that is worse than your spouse’s offer.

Despite the risks, there are situations when going to trial is unavoidable or worth the expense.

Negotiations Breakdown

You will fail to reach an out-of-court divorce settlement if you cannot have reasonable negotiations. You should enter divorce negotiations with a list of goals and a willingness to compromise if it will help you reach an agreement. It is unlikely that either of you will get everything you want from the agreement, and a divorce court may not accept an agreement that unfairly favors you. However, negotiations will fail if:

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