Across the United States, hundreds of thousands of couples get divorced each year, with more than 20,000 divorces being granted to couples who are residents of the state of Illinois. Most of these divorces are not settled in a courtroom, but rather through negotiations between the individuals themselves or their attorneys. However, there are always certain situations in which avoiding the courtroom is impossible for one reason or another. Litigated divorces can become quite contentious and intense, especially if you and your partner disagree on important issues such as child-related concerns and financial matters. If you and your partner end up in front of a judge, you may find that testimony from an expert witness is an effective way of strengthening your case. 

Expert Witnesses and Divorce Litigation

The role of an expert witness in any trial is to help the judge and the jury understand specific information that they otherwise would not be able to understand without a specialized education and/or background. In family law cases, expert testimony is not always needed and is not always permitted, either. If the judge determines that an expert witness is not necessary, he or she will not permit the witness’ testimony to be entered as evidence.

When you and your spouse reach the point where you are ready to begin allocating property among yourselves, one of the first things you will have to do is determine what is and is not subject to division during your divorce. When a couple goes through a divorce in the state of Illinois, their assets are divided into two categories: marital and non-marital property. Marital property is the only type of property subject to division and consists of any property you or your spouse acquire during the marriage, with a few exceptions. One such exception is for gifts, which can be considered both marital and non-marital property, depending on the circumstances of the situation.

Gifts as Marital Property

Most of the time, the items that you receive as gifts during your marriage will be considered non-marital property. However, there may be circumstances in which your spouse will argue that the gift should be considered marital property and therefore subject to division with your other assets. Here are a few common examples of how gifts can be considered marital property during your divorce:

When you are a parent, one of the greatest joys in life is spending time with your children. The holiday season is a magical time, especially for children, and seeing the happiness on their faces is a pleasure for many parents. When you share parenting time with your children’s other parent, you are also bound to have to share holiday time with them, too. Spending the holidays without your children can be difficult after you have been used to seeing your children on each and every holiday throughout the year. Unfortunately, having to spend holidays apart from your children is often an inevitable reality for many divorced or separated parents. Even though spending what is supposed to be “the most wonderful time of the year” away from your children does not feel like that at first, it does not have to be as awful as you may think. If this is your first year spending the holidays apart from your kids, here are a few tips to help you through the season:

• Let yourself experience your emotions. You should not be afraid to grieve the first holiday season without your children. This can be a very emotional time for some parents, but the important thing is recognizing your emotions and allowing yourself to process them. This may include crying or talking to a friend or counselor about your feelings. It is helpful to get them out instead of keeping them bottled up inside, which could lead to resentment and bitterness.

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When a marriage breaks down, it is rare that the two spouses still want to live in the same home together, let alone spend time in the same room with one another. However, many couples still try to reside under one roof while their divorce is underway, especially if there are children involved. However, this can become difficult if things turn sour or if you and your spouse are not on good terms when you begin the divorce. Unless you and your spouse qualify and file for a simplified dissolution and agree on all issues, you will have to negotiate the terms of your divorce. This process can be extremely stressful for couples who do not communicate well or who cannot cooperate with one another. In extreme cases, either spouse can petition to have exclusive possession of the marital home. 

What Does Being Granted “Exclusive Possession” of the Marital Home Mean?

During your divorce, you and your spouse both have the right to request to have exclusive possession of your marital home, but only until the divorce is finalized and only under certain circumstances. Typically, these circumstances have to be extreme. You must be able to prove that either you or your children's’ physical or mental well-being is in jeopardy by having both you and your spouse live there. The court will then conduct a hearing to determine the best course of action. In some cases, entering into a temporary eviction from the marital residence for one of the spouses can be a solution to the issues in the household. The spouse who is temporarily evicted is not always the spouse who keeps the home, as property division is an entirely different process.

Perhaps one of the most difficult and challenging parts of the divorce process for parents is creating a parenting plan for their children after their divorce is finalized. The parenting plan will act as a blueprint for how most things related to parenting and the children should be handled. No two parenting plans are the same, as each family has different needs and situations. There are many factors that can affect your parenting plan, but one of the biggest factors can be your child’s age. Creating a parenting plan around infants, especially, can seem daunting, but it is not impossible. If you have a baby and you need to create a parenting plan, the following are a few things to keep in mind.

Frequent Visits Are Important

There are many different types of visitation schedules you can create for your children, but when it comes to parenting time with an infant, the more frequently it occurs, the better. Infants do not yet have the ability to create the best memories, so frequent interactions with both parents will ensure that the baby is able to form a bond with both of them and recognize they are important people in their life as they grow older.  

When talking about divorce, most people are familiar with the commonly cited fact that around half of all U.S. marriages ultimately fail. According to the Pew Research Center, the general divorce rate in the United States has actually been decreasing since 1990. When you look at adults who are over the age of 50, however, the divorce rate has actually increased. Ten out of every 1,000 couples over the age of 50 got divorced in 2015, which doubled from 1990. Among those who were age 65 and older, the divorce rate actually tripled between 1990 and 2015. Getting divorced when you are over the age of 50, which is also referred to as gray divorce, can be a complicated process, and that is why hiring a knowledgeable attorney is so important.

Attitudes About Divorce Are Changing

Even just 30 years ago in 1990, there was more of a negative stigma surrounding divorce than what exists in today’s world. If you got divorced back then or even longer ago, it was scandalous and wrong. Now, getting a divorce is seen by many as the right thing to do if you find yourself in a loveless or unsatisfying marriage. Gray divorces could be more prevalent because of this shift in public attitude.

We have all likely heard the famous saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” The sentiment can also be said for divorce. In many situations, it is not just you and your spouse’s attorneys who work on the divorce. In many cases, there are other professionals that you hire or consult with throughout the process. Even your divorce attorney may recommend that you hire certain professionals for specific aspects of the divorce, especially if you need them to testify for you in court. Having the right team together can greatly reduce your stress and uncertainty and make the entire process much easier for everyone involved.

CPA and/or Forensic Accountant

For most divorces, a certified public accountant (CPA) is sufficient enough to help you get your finances together and help you gain a clear understanding of your assets and liabilities. A CPA will use your tax returns, loan documents, mortgage information, income, and expenses to give you an accurate representation of what your financial situation actually looks like. In more complex financial situations, such as ones in which a spouse tries to hide assets, a forensic accountant may be necessary. A forensic accountant will be able to investigate and delve deeper into your finances than a CPA would and uncover and discrepancies that exist.

Depending on where you are in your divorce proceedings, you may not have given much thought about what will happen after everything is said and done. The divorce process usually consumes all of your attention and energy, leaving you little to none to devote to focusing on the future. Most people who file for divorce have a general idea of how the process works, but what they do not know is what happens after everything is over. Life after divorce can be intimidating, but you should also think of it as the beginning of the rest of your life. You may be surprised at what the next chapter holds. 

Expect the Unexpected 

Going through a divorce under any circumstances can be life-changing, but may also be a fresh start. Here are a few things that you may not be expecting after your Illinois divorce:

By far, one of the things that couples state is the most stressful during a divorce is the financial aspect of the proceedings. When you get a divorce, you and your spouse must come to an agreement as to how nearly everything the two of you own will be divided. This includes both tangible items, such as vehicles and your marital home, in addition to intangible assets and debts, such as bank accounts and credit cards. The courts encourage you to come to an agreement about the division of your property among the two of you, but that is not always possible. If the court must intervene, a variety of factors will be used to determine an equitable distribution of assets.

Dividing Marital Property

If you are like most married couples, you and your spouse probably jointly own most everything. This makes things easier during a marriage, but during a divorce, it can complicate matters. If you and your spouse both have your name legally attached to items such as vehicles, homes, other real estate property, or credit card debt, it may be confusing when it comes to dividing the property. Because many of these items cannot just be split in half, some creative methods are often used to accomplish the division in a fair manner.

Getting a divorce means a lot of changes will occur. One of the most noticeable is your change in income. Most married couples live and run their household off of two incomes. When you get divorced, you have to transition from sustaining a household under shared incomes to meeting your needs with your income alone. For spouses who have not worked during their marriage or who have recently entered the workforce, this can be problematic. People who make significantly less than their spouses may also be concerned about their ability to support themselves after divorce. In these cases, spousal maintenance may be awarded. But what happens when your situation does not fall under the normal guidelines for calculation?

Illinois Spousal Support Guidelines

There are a number of factors that can affect whether or not you receive a maintenance award. These factors can include the income of both you and your spouse, whether or not either of you were out of the workforce for a period of time, and each of your needs. If the court finds that an award is appropriate, and you and your spouse earn a combined income of less than $500,000, the court will follow normal guidelines. This means spousal maintenance will be calculated by taking 33.3 percent of the income of the paying spouse and subtracting 25 percent of the income of the receiving spouse. Maintenance will usually be paid monthly, but in some cases, it may be paid annually or in a lump sum at the time of divorce.

Although it is not impossible to have an amicable divorce, that is not always the case for some couples. Depending on the circumstances, it can be difficult to push your feelings about your spouse and the end of your marriage aside so you can work together peacefully. Divorce is a stressful situation that can, unfortunately, bring out the worst in some people. Some spouses can become controlling, and they may be tempted to spy on each other through the use of electronic devices. In these contentious situations, it is important that you take the steps needed to protect your electronic devices and the information stored on them from your spouse. Below are a few practical ways you can protect your privacy from your spouse’s interference.

Change Your Passwords

You may think that password-protected information is always safe. However, this is not always true. Even if you have passwords protecting devices like your cell phone, your computer, or different financial accounts, you should still change them to prevent your spouse from gaining access. This can be especially useful if you have previously used your spouse’s devices to log in to certain accounts, because password information may have been saved. Be sure to use unique passwords for each account, and choose passwords that your spouse will not be likely to guess. By ensuring that your spouse cannot access your accounts, you can prevent them from taking actions such as dissipating marital assets by transferring money from a joint account into a personal account.

Many people who are unhappily married with children worry about how a divorce will affect their kids. Some of them end up “staying together for the kids.” It would be naive of anyone to think that a divorce does not affect your children -- studies show that it clearly does. However, those effects are often short-term concerns that, with proper attention, will eventually dissipate. Staying together for the kids often has a more lasting effect on the children, and it can actually do much more harm than good in the long run. As more information becomes available about the impact divorce has on children, more parents are making the decision to split up for the sake of everyone. After the split, you will notice changes in your children as they try to make sense of the event. The following are three tips for parenting after your divorce that can help you manage this transition. 

Never Make Your Children Choose Between You and Your Ex-Spouse

One of the worst things you can do is to force your children to choose between their parents. Not only is this completely unfair, but it can also be damaging to your kids. Even though you and your spouse are no longer together, you are both still and will forever be parents to your offspring. Your children have the right to maintain close and loving relationships with both of you.

The legal concept of “dissipation” refers to wasteful spending that takes place near the end of a couple’s marriage. When Illinois couples divorce, their marital estate is divided according to equitable distribution. When one spouse’s wasteful or reckless spending decreases the value of the marital estate prior to divorce, a dissipation claim can help the other spouse regain the value of the lost or wasted property. Many types of irresponsible spending can be considered dissipative, including a spouse who spends money on an addiction or substance abuse problem. Read on to learn about when a spouse’s addiction can contribute to dissipation and what to do if you wish to file a dissipation claim.

Defining Dissipation in Illinois Law

Illinois statutes and case law define dissipation as the use of marital assets “for the sole benefit of one of the spouses for a purpose unrelated to the marriage” when the marriage is nearing divorce. Put another way, dissipative spending occurs when a spouse who is getting divorced uses marital funds or property in a way that only benefits him or her. The reckless spending must take place when the marriage is undergoing an “irretrievable breakdown” in order to meet the legal definition of dissipation. Generally, a marriage is considered to be undergoing a breakdown when the couple is no longer attempting to work out their issues or salvage the marriage.

Dissipative Spending Can Include Funds Lost to an Addiction

There are many types of irresponsible spending that can constitute dissipation. Money spent by a spouse on gifts for a secret lover may be considered dissipative. Funds spent on a gambling addiction or compulsive shopping problem may also be an example of dissipation. Substance abuse and alcoholism can also fall under this definition. If you bring a claim of dissipation against your spouse, you must file a notice with the court identifying the following information:

Getting a divorce -- or dissolution of marriage, as it is called in Illinois -- means the marriage between you and your spouse will be legally terminated. One your divorce case is approved by a judge and he or she has given you a Judgement of Dissolution of Marriage, both you and your former spouse will be free to remarry and can resume your former name, if applicable. Getting a divorce can be a very long and complicated legal process, so it is important to understand the basics before you begin the process.

Filing the Petition

To officially begin the divorce process, you must first file a Petition for Dissolution of Marriage in the circuit court of the county in which either you or your spouse resides. To file this petition, either you or your spouse must be a resident of Illinois for at least 90 days and you must be able to prove that you and your spouse have irreconcilable differences. Once the petition is filed, a copy of the petition will be served to your spouse.