Posted on June 22, 2017 in Child Custody

On May 3, 2017, YouTube stars Michael and Heather Martin lost custody of their two children as a result of a video they posted on YouTube. In the video, Michael and Heather Martin spilled invisible ink on the carpet in one of the children’s rooms. They then blamed their children for ruining the carpet, and the children cried as their parents yelled and cursed at them. Finally, Heather and Michael Martin laughed and told their children it was a prank. As seen in the video, the children were not amused.

The video of the prank went viral and prompted the creation of an online petition calling on Child Protective Services (C.P.S.) to remove the children from Michael and Heather Martin’s home. C.P.S. took the children in and Rose Hall, the children’s biological mother, was granted emergency custody.

This situation highlights the impact social media can have in situations like child custody. Your use of social media should be even more stringent if you are going through a child custody battle. Electronic evidence in the form of social media posts and pictures can be used in court if the evidence meets a certain criterion.

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 Posted on June 20, 2017 in Divorce

“I think we should part ways.”

Who would you rather hear these words from? Your employer or your significant other?

Last week, What Works Center for Wellbeing and the University of East Anglia found in a study that men and women who are terminated do not fully recover emotionally. However, the researchers saw that people who are divorced do completely heal at some point in their life.

What Works Center for Wellbeing discovered that getting fired leads to a more significant decrease in life satisfaction than getting divorced or widowed does. This is because people who are unemployed are increasingly discontent in the years following their termination. With a stagnant economy, job seekers—especially those who were fired—are finding it difficult to obtain employment. This causes job seekers’ self-confidence and self-worth to take a nosedive.

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 Posted on June 16, 2017 in Child Support

While sometimes determining child support is a straightforward matter, other cases present difficulties and gray areas. In these situations, an attorney is often required to assess the financial situation of the parents and determine how much is owed for the support of the child or children at issue.

One such complicating factor is if a parent has more than one child support obligation. For example, if a father has children with two different mothers, there may be more than one child support order, which may affect the obligations owed.

Child Support Law in Illinois

To understand the mechanics of this calculation, we must first review the general law on child support calculations in Illinois. Beginning July 1, 2017, Illinois will be using the “income shares” method of determining child support. Under this model, courts will require each parent to prove their net income and then use tables to set the child support amount.

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 Posted on June 12, 2017 in Divorce

Divorce settlements and orders should always be drafted to address the future. The reason is because the decisions made during a divorce many times controls how your family grows after a divorce. Even in cases where careful planning and consideration is used in drafting an order in a divorce, life changes may dictate that the order may need to be modified at a later date.

What Can Modified?

In order to modify an order handed down in a divorce proceeding the very first thing you must do is petition the court. This is where the help of a dauntless DuPage County family lawyer will be able to help. The types of orders that one can petition the court to modify include:

• Visitation arrangements
• Child custody arrangements

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 Posted on June 08, 2017 in Collaborative Law

When spouses are considering pursuing a divorce one of the primary considerations that must be made is how much money is it going to cost. From the cost of lawyers themselves to the various professionals that may need to be used in a divorce, the entire process can seem relentlessly expensive. However, there are options to avoid a potentially lengthy and costly divorce. One of those options is choosing collaborative law.

Collaborative law is a type of dispute resolution. It is a decidedly useful tool for spouses considering divorce. Collaborative law includes both spouses through their attorneys to cooperatively develop and acquiesce to the terms of the settlement.

Does Collaborative Law Always Work?

Despite collaborative law being a cooperative method of pursuing a divorce, the success still turns on whether the parties can reach an agreement. Not every collaborative law effort will be successful, and when the negotiations break down, the matter may have to be settled in court. Knowing this ahead of time should motivate you to choose an experienced and professional DuPage County divorce lawyer who has also been trained to handle collaborative law matters. It is important that the representation you choose is as skilled at alternative dispute resolution as they are in trial litigation.

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 Posted on June 02, 2017 in Divorce

When progressing through a divorce in Illinois, spouses have to make important financial decisions. This must be done while tolerating a great deal of emotional stress. Many times this volatile situation can cause people to make unnecessary yet consequential mistakes. A substantial mistake made regarding finance is operating and making decisions without having ample information. Without the information required to make sound decisions, the outcome of a divorce can be left to chance, or even worse, the other spouse.

Budgeting Through Divorce

Another common mistake made when spouses are going through a divorce is not adequately budgeting. When spouses are married, they become accustomed to having the financial resources of two incomes. When a marriage ends in divorce, the spouses are forced to adapt their financial decision making to address the fact that they no longer have the other spouse’s income available. Not making a conscious and focused consideration about the decreased income that spouses have available to them can lead to serious financial shortcomings that an Illinois court may not be able to rectify.

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 Posted on June 01, 2017 in Child Custody

Going through a divorce can be an emotionally draining ordeal with many unanswered questions that are often fought over. Decisions must be made inside of an emotional space that often drives spouses to treat every decision like a zero-sum game. Spouses may try to punish each other or hide assets. However, there are legitimate concerns regarding visitation or what is referred to as parenting time when one parent is physically or emotionally abusive.

Proving Abuse

Abuse can manifest itself in many ways. The most obvious form of abuse is physical abuse. In instances where physical abuse exist there are physical marks that a victim or spouse can point to as reasons why the abusive spouse should not have unsupervised or any visitation rights. It is important that you hire a fearless and knowledgeable DuPage County divorce lawyer to assist you through this difficult process. That lawyer will be able to present compelling evidence and arguments to the court that explain the extent and severity of the physical abuse and why the abuse is cause to terminate a parent's visitation rights.

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 Posted on May 31, 2017 in Divorce

Married or unmarried people sincerely love their pets. Roughly 78 million dogs and 86 million cats are owned throughout our nation. When a marriage between pet owners ends in divorce, one of the most contentious matters to navigate through is deciding who will take ownership of the pets in the dividing household.

Are Pets Subject to Court Ordered Visitation?

Illinois law mandates that “any person having a right of property in an animal, or who keeps or harbors an animal, or who has it in his care, or acts as its custodian is that animal’s owner.”

For example, a spouse who leaves the home of his or her ex-spouse who then attempts to assert ownership of the pet he left will likely have a difficult time getting a court to agree. The court would likely rely on previous Illinois law to determine who the legal owner of the animal was. In that event, the court would probably decide that since the husband had left the home, the pet was legally owned by the now ex-wife.

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 Posted on May 30, 2017 in Property Division

Going through a divorce is a complex issue both legally and emotionally. Many contentious issues must be decided on including, child custody, child support, and property division. When a house is part of the property that needs to be divided the tenants of divorce law are used to determine how the home or the home's value is shared between the spouses. It takes an experienced and insightful DuPage County divorce lawyer to navigate this treacherous legal terrain successfully.

Equitable Division

Illinois law controls how real property is divided in a divorce. Illinois is an "equitable division state." That means that the law does not require that marital assets be divided equally among divorcing spouses. Instead, the law requires that property is distributed equitably. Judges rely on several variables to determine what an equitable division of property is, however, Illinois courts are forbidden to consider marital misconduct for property division. Instead, judges are instructed to consider:

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 Posted on May 18, 2017 in Family Law

Spending a lifetime with our loved ones is a beautiful thought. Thinking about what kind of house you are going to buy, if you are going to have children, maybe even pets can bring warm and fuzzy feelings into your heart. Many people consider marriage as a way to solidify their connection with their loved one. However, that is not the only option. Civil Unions are a less common way to create a binding union between loved ones.

What is a Civil Union?

A civil union is a legal status much like a marriage. Civil unions provide many of the same legal protections that marriage does. One key difference, however, is the legal protections exist at the state level. Federal protections like tax breaks and Social Security benefits are not built into a civil union the way they are a marriage.

While marriage is recognized in all 50 states, civil unions are not. The only states that currently recognize civil unions are Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, and Colorado.

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