Posted on February 12, 2015 in Divorce

People often ignore the possible benefits of prenuptial agreements, thinking of them as documents that only the wealthy need. Even some people who do think they would benefit from a prenup avoid them because they are nervous about how their future spouse will react to the idea. While all couples should consider the potential upside of prenups, there is one group of couples who can find them particularly useful: couples entering into second or third marriages.

These couples often see specific benefits from prenups for a variety of reasons. First, the couple is likely to consist of people who are more well-established in life and who already have their own finances. Second, the couple's members may have children from prior marriages whose interests need protecting. Third, the notion of a prenup may be more palatable to people who already understand the realities of a divorce.

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 Posted on February 11, 2015 in Child Custody

Divorce can often be a trying experience, but adding a mental illness to the process can often make things difficult. In fact, one study shows that marriages where one spouse has a mental illness are 20 to 80 percent more likely to end in divorce, depending on the illness in question. Of course, the exact way a mental illness will affect a divorce depends greatly on a variety of factors, such as the way the illness is managed and the type of illness. If the disease is well-managed and under control, then it may not affect the divorce much at all. However, poorly managed mental illnesses or those that affect the safety of people close to the mentally-ill spouse can take a more central role in the process.

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 Posted on February 05, 2015 in Asset Division

While marriage is still a major cultural institution, shifting attitudes have led to a rise in unmarried couples living together. Some of these couples see marriage on the horizon, but others do not feel the need to formalize their relationship through ceremony. In fact, the 2010 Census showed a 13 percent increase in unmarried cohabitation between 2009 and 2010 alone. Unfortunately, Illinois law has yet to catch up with these changing attitudes. The state does not recognize common law marriage or other similar default property rights. This can be a problem when couples split up or when one of them passes. Fortunately, the law does still provide some options for proactive couples. Couples can enter into cohabitation agreements that mark out specific rights that they want the government to recognize. Additionally, there are special options in cases where the couples choose to purchase a house together.

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 Posted on February 03, 2015 in Divorce

Everyone going into a marriage expects it to last forever. They would not be entering into it if they did not. Yet, the reality is that a large portion of marriages fail. Unwinding a marriage through the divorce process can be time-consuming, expensive, and emotionally draining. Fortunately, Illinois law provides couples with the opportunity to protect themselves from this hassle beforehand. The state allows couples to prepare prenups, short for prenuptial agreements or premarital agreements. These agreements allow couples to agree on issues of property division and spousal support in advance of the marriage in case a divorce ever happened.

Despite these benefits, many people approach the subject of prenups with some trepidation. The documents have a stigma that people are planning for the divorce or they do not have faith in the marriage. However, that is not what prenups are about. They are simply preparation for a rainy day. It is does not take a lack of faith to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

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 Posted on January 29, 2015 in Divorce

Regardless of all the legal movies that portray the trial as the climax of a long legal dispute, trials are actually exceedingly rare in the United States legal system. Well over 90 percent of all lawsuits settle rather than going to trial, and divorce cases are no exception to that rule. In fact, a report by CBS news suggests that only five percent of divorce cases end in a trial. This is because settlements tend to benefit everyone. They shorten the process for the parties, give the spouses more control over the outcome of their case, and they lighten the load on the legal system. Although a case can settle at any time, one of the most common ways cases settle is after a pretrial conference.

What the Pretrial Conference Is

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 Posted on January 27, 2015 in Divorce

Suppose a stranger offered you $100 now or $100 in a year, which would you choose? Almost everyone would take the $100 now because of an intuitive understanding of something economists refer to as the “time value of money.” Money now is worth more than the same amount of money later, not just in the sense that instant gratification is nice, but in terms of actual financial worth.

Understanding why this is true and how to compare money across time can be important for divorce cases. After all, a person's intuition is enough to know that $100 is better than $100 later, but what about $100 now or $150 in a year? More realistically, what about a decreased child support payment in exchange for paying a greater share of the child's college expenses?

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 Posted on January 22, 2015 in Divorce

Divorce is often a time of strong, turbulent emotions for many people. These sorts of strong, negative emotions can often cause people to do things that they come to regret later. One increasingly common thing that people, especially jilted husbands, have begun doing in the wake of divorce is posting “revenge porn,” nude or revealing pictures of their soon-to-be ex-spouses on the internet. Until recently, revenge porn was a classic case of the law failing to keep up with the rapid pace of technology. People having their pictures posted were short on legal recourse. That is no longer the case. Illinois recently passed one of the most aggressive revenge porn laws in the country. The law criminalizes the posting of revenge porn, and has an exceedingly broad reach.

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 Posted on January 20, 2015 in Divorce

Over the past few years, Illinois has gained some notoriety in legal circles for having one of the strictest eavesdropping laws in the country. In fact, the law, which governs the recording of conversations, was so strict that the Illinois Supreme Court eventually struck it down because of civil rights concerns. It prevented citizens from recording police while they were on duty, which many civil rights advocates believe helps keep police from abusing their authority. Following that decision, the Illinois Legislature drafted and passed a new law that was designed to avoid those civil rights concerns, while still protecting people's privacy. This new law is important for people going through divorce because many people unwittingly violate this law by recording their spouse in an attempt to gather evidence for their future divorce case.

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 Posted on January 15, 2015 in Divorce

The ideal of the 40-hour work week was based on the principle that workers would have eight hours a day at work, eight hours a day to spend at home with their families, and eight hours a day to sleep. While those exact numbers may have shifted around in the modern era, they still point to the idea that the two main places that a person spends his or her time are at his or her job and with his or her family. It is not surprising, then, that a divorce, which centers on changing family dynamics, can also impact a person's job.

How Divorce Impacts Businesses

There has not been a large amount of quality research done on the overall quantitative impact of divorce on businesses, but a recent survey by a British family law group revealed that six percent of people reported having left their job as a result of getting a divorce. Another 13 percent of people reported taking sick leave to help themselves cope with the divorce.

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 Posted on January 13, 2015 in Child Custody

Child custody law is a complicated area where the well-being of a child is often at stake. Both the complexity and the stakes are often magnified when child custody decisions cross borders. At the end of 2013, the Supreme Court heard arguments on a case about such an international child custody decision. A mother had taken her child away from her husband in London to live with relatives in New York, alleging that her husband was abusing her and the child. The husband sought the return of the child under an international treaty. The Supreme Court recently handed down a ruling in the case, deciding that the treaty did not require them to order the child's return to London.

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