When the Illinois Uniform Premarital Agreement Act went into effect it applied to all premarital agreements executed on or after January 1, 1990. So while premarital agreements, also called prenuptial agreements or “prenups,” have been in use for more than 25 years, every year a number of these contracts are voided for a variety of reasons.

Without the help of an experienced lawyer who focuses their practice on matters of prenuptial agreements, you could watch as your spouse walks off with a lion’s share of the marital assets. Understanding the basics is a good start toward protecting yourself in the event of a divorce.

What Might Invalidate Your Prenup?

While any divorce can be a stressful time for the adults experiencing it, adults generally possess the coping skills and access to resources that allow them to manage the anxiety that accompanies such an event. Children, however, react to the divorce of their parents in many different ways depending on age, gender, personality, and the circumstances surrounding the divorce.

A number of published studies indicate that children of divorce tend to experience physical, emotional and spiritual consequences as a result of their parent’s divorce. Typical among these are:

• Poor academic performance
• Diminished emotional well-being
• Changes in social habits and/or behavior
• Increased aggression or isolation
• Changes in appetite and physical care

In some cases, children of divorce may go through their daily routine pretending that nothing is bothering them and everything is normal. While that may seem ideal, bottling up one’s emotions about a subject as volatile as divorce can be just as harmful as drastic changes in mood or behavior.

Divorce. Once that word is uttered by your spouse, you are left wondering how your relationship unraveled so quickly. While many believe that divorce is caused by significant issues such as cheating or abuse, there are minuscule behaviors within a marriage that can also derail it.

How you Can Improve your Relationship with your Spouse

However, identifying—and then changing—behaviors that may be hurting your relationship can help you avoid derailing your marriage:

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.

“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.

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:

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.

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.

Child support is often a contentious part of a divorce. A massive change to the way that child support is calculated is set to take effect this July. It updates and streamlines an outdated method of calculating child support.

Under current Illinois law, child support is calculated using a fixed formula that requires a non-residential parent to pay a fixed percentage of their income. This was problematic because the one size fits all formula produced results that did not satisfy the needs of the child nor were the calculations developed to address the best interest of any children involved.

How Will Child Support Be Calculated Under the New Law?

Allocating parental responsibilities often involves more than just parents and children. Grandparents and other family members often play a critical role in a child's life. For this reason, Illinois low allows grandparents to seek court-ordered visitation rights with a child.

It is important to understand that the law presumes that a parent is fit to make decisions regarding their child. This includes where and when to let a grandparent visit. If, however, the grandparent can prove to the court that the parent's denial of access is both unreasonable and harmful to the child's “mental, physical, or emotional health,” a judge can override the parent after considering a number of factors.

Court Holds Oral Visitation Agreement Unenforceable in Illinois

There are many reasons why a dissolution of marriage becomes necessary. Spouses grow apart, partners fall out of love, and individuals change their life goals. Occasionally, divorce becomes necessary for safety reasons if one spouse is abusive. Although Illinois is a no-fault state and anyone can divorce, it is important to understand how domestic abuse in a marriage can affect the outcome of the divorce proceedings.

Married Without Children

Any type of abuse that occurs between romantic partners or spouses is considered domestic violence or abuse. The law defines domestic abuse as:

If you have reached the point in your marriage where divorce is becoming more and more of a possibility, it is time to start gathering information about the process. Ending a marriage is going to be challenging, even in the most amicable of situations. You may be able to alleviate some of the difficult by becoming familiar with a few basic concepts that pertain to divorce in Illinois.

Grounds for Divorce

For many generations, a married person could seek a divorce on the basis—or grounds—that his or her spouse engaged in certain behaviors, including adultery, repeated mental and physical cruelty, patterns of substance abuse, and abandonment. Beginning in 2016, however, this is no longer the case in Illinois. Today, a divorce will only be granted on the grounds the irreconcilable differences have led to the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.

The holidays are supposed to be a time of joy to be celebrated with loved ones, but the season can be stressful and difficult, especially for those who are going through a divorce or have divorced. The holiday season can seem lonely and challenging, with divided families and uprooted traditions. If you are divorced, and especially if you have children, it is important to be prepared for the holidays so that they can be pleasant for everyone involved.

Parenting Concerns

If you are divorced with children, yoiur parenting plan will likely dictate what to do during a holiday. In Illinois, parents have the right to spend time with their children unless it would endanger the child’s health or well-being. For many people, holidays are an important time to spend with children and family.

If you are a divorced, separated, or unmarried parent, holidays can present a number of rather unique challenges. In most families, holidays are a time for getting together with loved ones, many of whom who have not seen one another in some time—possibly since the same holiday last year. Of course, parents want their children to be part of the festivities and to visit with family members who may have traveled a great distance for the occasion. If you are subject to a shared parenting agreement, however, it may take some negotiation to figure out where your children will be spending the holidays.

Do Not Wait

While November may have only just started, Thanksgiving is less than three weeks away. This means that you and your child’s other parent should not delay in making plans regarding your holiday parenting time. The first thing you should do, however, is to check your existing parenting plan document, as many such plans contain a holiday parenting time schedule created years in advance to reduce confusion. If your plan does not include a holiday schedule or provides that you will negotiate a reasonable agreement each year, it is time to start preparing for winter holidays.