Take the Time to Review Your Divorce-Related Orders

 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Order Modification

As 2015 draws to a close, now is a good time to take a fresh look at the orders in place related to your divorce. Most commonly, these include arrangements for child custody or parental responsibilities, child support, and spousal maintenance. Life moves very quickly, and it is important to be sure that your court-ordered rights and responsibilities continue to appropriately match your situation.

Order Modifications

With very few exceptions, any family law order entered by the court is subject review and modification should such changes be warranted. The laws governing order modification typically require the person seeking a modification to demonstrate the need for reconsideration due to a significant change in circumstances. This type of change may include a dramatic increase or decrease in income, a remarriage, death of a family member, and any other event that could directly impact the appropriateness of an existing order.

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Fighting Financial Threats during a Divorce

 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Debt

Even if a person has spent hours considering their various options and weighing its impact on their future, the decision to divorce can still elicit heightened emotions of fear. Unfortunately, it happens that some spouses may attempt to influence how the other proceeds with the divorce by issuing threats that play upon those fears.

Responding to Threats

It is not unusual to want your divorce to end in a way that is mutually agreeable. It is even acceptable to think the final settlement should favor you if the marriage included some egregious acts by your spouse. However, when threats are issued it is important to respond in an appropriate and legally measured manner. Doing otherwise can result in negative repercussion and even severe sanctions. However, in most cases, the threats can be best categorized as empty bluster.

• “You’ll never get a dime unless you do this my way.” This just is not true. Community property states lay out exactly how marital assets are divided. In other states, a judge has the final say.

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Drug Abuse Can Impact Your Parenting Time

 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Visitation

As you may be already aware, beginning in 2016, the excessive use and abuse of drugs and alcohol will no longer be separately recognized as grounds for divorce. The dissolution process itself must be based on irreconcilable differences, essentially making every divorce officially a no-fault situation. However, even without making drug abuse the basis for the divorce, a large number of couples, and parents, in particular, are affected by the destructive, chemical-related behavior of one party. It is important to understand that drug abuse can and will continue to impact, arrangements regarding parental responsibilities and parenting time.

Allocation of Parental Responsibilities

Following a divorce or the break-up of unmarried parents, you and the other parent will be expected to reach a workable agreement regarding the parental responsibilities for your child. Before it will be approved, however, the court must examine the terms of the agreement and determine that they are reflective of the child’s overall best interests. If the agreement is not approved, or if you and the other parent cannot develop one together, the court will decide how parental responsibilities will be decided. In doing so, the court must take into account the various factors at work in the relationship and establish an arrangement that will meet the child’s needs.

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What is Parenting Time?

 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Visitation

For many years in Illinois, the parental right to reasonable visitation has been fiercely protected by law. While a court could restrict or limit visitation to protect the child, it would take an extremely serious set of circumstances to completely terminate such rights of a parent. Thanks to a measure passed in Illinois this past year, parents will no longer be considered to have so-called “visitation” with their children. Instead the term to be used will be “parenting time,” more accurately representing the inherent responsibilities.

Changes in Child Custody Laws

The shift from visitation to parenting time is part of an overall larger transformation of the state’s child custody provisions. Concepts of sole and joint custody are being eliminated in favor of a much more cooperative idea of allocated parenting responsibilities. Child custody, as it currently exists, was often a major point of contention for divorcing, separated, or unmarried parents, as many seemed fixated on “winning” or “losing” a custody battle. By focusing on actual parenting responsibilities rather than titles or statuses like custodial and non-custodial parent, the well-being of the child is more likely to remain the top priority.

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Has Your Parenting Time Been Restricted?

 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Visitation

There is little question about the difficulty of parenting after a divorce, separation, or break-up. If you have been allocated significantly less parenting time than your child’s other parent, maintaining a meaningful relationship with your child can be even more challenging. But what happens if the other parent convinces the court to restrict or limit your parenting time even further? An experienced family law attorney can help you understand what recourse you may have, and work with you in taking the steps to restore your parental rights.

Grounds for the Restriction of Parenting Time

The governing principle of Illinois family law regarding children and parenting responsibilities is always to serve the child’s best interests. In doing so, the court begins with the presumption that active participation by both parents is best for the child, and, therefore, will allocate parenting time to each parent based on the family’s circumstances. Your parenting time cannot be restricted unless the other parent can show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that your behavior or lifestyle seriously endangers your child. These dangers can be to child’s mental, moral, or physical health, as well as to his or her emotional development.

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Your Right to Parenting Time in Illinois

 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Visitation

If you are divorced or separated from your child’s other parent, you may face a number of challenges related to exercising your parental rights. It is often difficult for couples who have gone their separate ways to see eye-to-eye regarding their children, but that does not mean one parent is any less important than the other. Under Illinois law, you have a number of legal rights involving your child that cannot be taken from you without due process.

Parental Responsibilities

The Illinois legislature recently overhauled the understanding of child custody in the state, refocusing the law on the allocation of parental responsibilities rather than statuses and titles. Parents are no longer awarded sole or joint custody, and neither party assumes the title of custodial or non-custodial parent. Instead, each parent is assigned authority for specific responsibilities, which are divided into two primary considerations. The first is significant decision-making regarding the child, which includes education, health care, religious training, and extracurricular activities. The other involves each parent’s allocated parenting time, previously called visitation.

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Your Child’s Wishes Regarding Custody and Parenting Time

 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Visitation

When a couple with children breaks up or gets divorced, it is often the children who get caught in the middle. Along with the other considerations inherent to the proceedings, the divorcing parents are faced with deciding how to divide parental responsibilities and parenting time. This concept used to be known as child custody in Illinois, but changes to the law have updated the language being used by the courts. Regardless of what it may be called, determining who will be responsible for your child and where he or she will live are serious concerns with many factors to be considered. Some people may be surprised to learn that the child’s wishes are, by law, expected to be part of the equation.

What the Law Says

According to the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act, a child does have some say in how parental responsibilities and parenting time are allocated by the courts. The court, however, will not base its decision solely on the child’s wishes; they are a part of the bigger picture. Other factors, as one might expect, include each parent’s ability and willingness to provide for the child, allegations or history of abuse, and the relationship each parent has with the child.

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Are You Being Denied Parenting Time?

 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Visitation

There are many scenarios that could lead to you having significantly less parenting time with your child than the other parent. Perhaps you were not married when your child was born and the court granted the other parent all of the decision-making responsibilities for the child and most of the parenting time. Or, maybe at the time of your divorce, you had serious issues with anger or showed signs of alcohol abuse, leading the court to limit the danger to your child. Whatever the reason may be, if you have precious little time with your child, you want to make the most of it. If the other parent is making it difficult for you to exercise your right to parenting time, a qualified family lawyer can help.

Get Things in Writing

Being denied access to your child can incredibly frustrating, especially if it is being done out of spite or anger. A finding of danger by the court is one thing, but the unsanctioned actions of the other parent are not acceptable. The first thing you should do if your parenting time rights are being unfairly limited is to keep a record of all communication between you and the other parent. Using emails or text messages instead of phone calls or in-person conversations can provide the documentation you may need down the road. If you ask to see your child and the other parent refuses, document his or her response. Failure by the other parent to comply with your court-ordered parenting arrangement could result in serious consequences for him or her.

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The Rights of Grandparents After an Adoption

 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Visitation

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

But what about cases where a parent has severed their legal parental rights by consenting to their child's adoption? Can the grandparents still seek visitation rights? An Illinois appeals court recently answered that question in the negative.

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Parental Responsibilities, Part Two: Parenting Time

 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Visitation

A divorced, separated, or unmarried parent should never feel like a stranger in the life of his or her child. For many parents, however, that was often their reality as Illinois—like many states—used to refer to their time with their children as “visitation.” A parent who is seen as a “visitor,” rather than integral part of the child’s life, could experience a variety of problems, including a lack of parental authority and the appearance of not being fully committed to his or her child’s best interests.

Last year, however, an amended law took effect which proved that Illinois lawmakers recognized the struggles of many divorced parents. The new law was an effort to “level the playing field” so to speak between parents with different levels of parental responsibilities.

Visitation Is Now Parenting Time

In a recent post on this blog, we discussed the recent changes in the law regarding child custody. That blog focused on significant decision-making responsibilities, but it mentioned that parenting time is also a primary consideration for parents and the courts during a divorce. The concept of parenting time replaced the old understanding of parental visitation, and the change in terminology more accurately reflects the situation of most divorce, separated, and unmarried parents. No parent deserves to automatically be treated as an outsider, and the new law is a big step in the right direction.

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