Divorce combines a complicated legal process and an emotional rollercoaster that can be difficult to reconcile. The marriage that you’ve poured considerable effort and care into is coming to an end, but in the process, you have a lot of work to do. Because your divorce will directly affect your parental and financial rights, the surest path forward is with the best Chicago divorce law firm in your corner.
The legal crux of every divorce involves negotiating the basic terms, which do not vary from couple to couple, including (as applicable):
Parental responsibilities in Illinois refer to the responsibility of making important decisions on behalf of your shared kids and the allocation of parenting time for each parent. The kinds of decisions involved include:
You and your ex can share this decision-making responsibility between yourselves, one of you can take it on, or you can divide the responsibility according to the kind of decision being made.
Parenting time determines how you and your ex will share your time with your children. If you are able to negotiate the terms between yourselves, your parenting time schedule can be as unique as your family. If not, however, you can expect the court to provide you with input – oftentimes considering the input of a court-appointed representative for the children.
Parents are required by law to support their children financially, and child support helps to ensure that each parent’s contributions are commensurate with his or her income and contributions to child-related expenses and obligations. State guidelines determine how child support is calculated in any given case, but a couple of the many the factors with the most weight include the number of overnights each of you has with the children and each parent’s income as it is now an income shared model in calculating child support.
Those assets that you and your spouse acquired together as a married couple, or acquired/contributed to during the course of the marriage, are seen as marital property in the eyes of the law. And because Illinois is an equitable distribution state, these assets must be divided fairly (in relation to wide-ranging factors) and equitably between you upon divorce.
Maintenance or alimony, which is also known as spousal support, is set forth by Illinois statutes and is a calculation taking income, needs, and the duration of the marriage into consideration (among other factors).
Because your divorce determines your parental and financial rights moving forward, you need the best Chicago divorce law firm in your corner, and WARD FAMILY LAW fits the bill. Our trusted divorce attorneys are on your side and here to help, so please don’t wait to contact us for more information today.
I knew we were going to have a custody battle from day one. It was going to be mean and messy and expensive and long. I did not know if I could handle it but I had to do it for my kids. Jennifer litigated my case to the end - we had an attorney for the kids, we had psych evaluations, we had reports for the Judge, we had court date after court date. She was strategic, smart, planned well ahead, and kept on top of everything. Thanks to her and her legal eagles my kids are in a…
We were not married but had two kids and we were both listed as the parents on the birth certificates. What I did not know at the time was that the birth certificate (for parents who are not married) does not count in Chicago! You have to have a paternity test or have signed some special paperwork at the hospital that we did not know about at the time. Ward Family Law prepared the court filings so that we could establish our parental rights. Thank you!
At the end of my divorce case I realized that the paperwork required us to provide the court with a Qualified domestic relations order (QDRO) in order for our retirement and investment accounts to be divided as we had agreed. The problem was that we did not have them done in time. Jennifer and her team stepped in and handled contacting the plan administrators, completing the draft QDROs, submitting them for pre-approval of everyone and then presenting them to the court. While we had hoped this was super easy there were a lot of steps and a lot of things…
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