You are facing a divorce, and you naturally want the best divorce attorney in Chicago on your side. Because the terms of your divorce will significantly affect you and your children’s future, this is a completely reasonable response. Your future is far too important to settle for anything less.
In order to finalize your divorce, you and your divorcing spouse will need to find a way to negotiate all of the following categories of divorce terms (as applicable):
The terms that you come to on each of these matters will reverberate into your future and should be afforded the close legal attention required.
When it comes to negotiating your divorce terms, the best path forward always involves the least amount of intervention possible. If, however, you and your ex are at an impasse regarding one concern or another, you’ll need to progress through the stages of intervention until you land upon mutually agreeable terms (or the court makes all remaining determinations on your behalf). These stages include:
Finally, if your efforts do not result in mutually acceptable terms in every category, the court will step in and make all remaining decisions for you, which is less than ideal but is sometimes a necessity.
If the remaining terms in front of the court involve your shared children, the court will always proceed with the best interest of the children in mind. This is colored by its fundamental stance that children’s needs are best served by maintaining a relationship and spending time with both parents (barring extreme conditions). Finally, if the matter relates to finances, the court will take every factor it deems pertinent into consideration while making what it considers an equitable – or fair – decision.
Moving through your divorce and into your best post-divorce future requires the kind of legal diligence and focus that the experienced Chicago divorce attorneys at WARD FAMILY LAW are committed to providing. Your satisfaction with the divorce terms you obtain is our primary focus, and we’re proud to have an impressive track record in this arena. Your case matters, so please don’t hesitate 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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