Posted on December 00, 0000 in Divorce

Some divorces can take years to resolve, which can lead to many unfavorable consequences for both parties. However, many divorces can be resolved on a quicker timeline and with fewer attorney’s fees.

To streamline your divorce proceedings, consider the following tips:

1. Agree with your soon-to-be ex-spouse as much as possible.

This is called an uncontested divorce. The simplest divorces involve spouses who agree that a divorce is needed. In these cases, a spouse is not trying to escape a process server or file unnecessary motions to delay a divorce from being finalized. There are also a number of other concerns that could be settled with little or no court intervention. For example, if the spouses agree on how parental responsibilities or the marital property should be divided, these issues will not need to be developed by the attorneys and decided by a judge.

2. Have a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement.

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 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Divorce

Getting a divorce can be very emotionally taxing. Divorce can also be monumentally expensive. There are seemingly cost that come out of nowhere, especially in cases where the divorce is contested, or there are children involved. More and more people are trending towards collaborative law as a means to keep the financial burden of getting a divorce minimized.

How Expensive Can Divorce Be?

That depends largely on the type of issues that need to be resolved. There is no universal cost for a contested or uncontested divorce. The average divorce in Illinois cost roughly $13,800. More than half of that figure will likely be allocated towards fees for your lawyer. The average hourly rate for a divorce attorney is $260.

The size of the firm, the amount of staff that works on your case, as well as the total time spent on your case will be the determining factor for how much you will pay in attorneys fees. Other expenses may include:

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 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Divorce

Married or unmarried people sincerely love their pets. Roughly 78 million dogs and 86 million cats are owned throughout our nation. When a marriage between pet owners ends in divorce, one of the most contentious matters to navigate through is deciding who will take ownership of the pets in the dividing household.

Are Pets Subject to Court Ordered Visitation?

Illinois law mandates that “any person having a right of property in an animal, or who keeps or harbors an animal, or who has it in his care, or acts as its custodian is that animal’s owner.”

For example, a spouse who leaves the home of his or her ex-spouse who then attempts to assert ownership of the pet he left will likely have a difficult time getting a court to agree. The court would likely rely on previous Illinois law to determine who the legal owner of the animal was. In that event, the court would probably decide that since the husband had left the home, the pet was legally owned by the now ex-wife.

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 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Divorce

When progressing through a divorce in Illinois, spouses have to make important financial decisions. This must be done while tolerating a great deal of emotional stress. Many times this volatile situation can cause people to make unnecessary yet consequential mistakes. A substantial mistake made regarding finance is operating and making decisions without having ample information. Without the information required to make sound decisions, the outcome of a divorce can be left to chance, or even worse, the other spouse.

Budgeting Through Divorce

Another common mistake made when spouses are going through a divorce is not adequately budgeting. When spouses are married, they become accustomed to having the financial resources of two incomes. When a marriage ends in divorce, the spouses are forced to adapt their financial decision making to address the fact that they no longer have the other spouse’s income available. Not making a conscious and focused consideration about the decreased income that spouses have available to them can lead to serious financial shortcomings that an Illinois court may not be able to rectify.

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 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Divorce

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:

• Visitation arrangements
• Child custody arrangements

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 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Divorce

“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.

What Works Center for Wellbeing discovered that getting fired leads to a more significant decrease in life satisfaction than getting divorced or widowed does. This is because people who are unemployed are increasingly discontent in the years following their termination. With a stagnant economy, job seekers—especially those who were fired—are finding it difficult to obtain employment. This causes job seekers’ self-confidence and self-worth to take a nosedive.

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 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Divorce

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:

1. Give each other space. Just because the both of you are married does not mean you have to attend every event or function together. Smothering your partner is not going to strengthen the marriage. Instead, you will likely get on each other’s nerves. Allocate time for yourself in which you relax or pursue activities you enjoy. Having personal time will allow you to nurture yourself, and by nurturing yourself, you will gain the energy you need to tend to your marriage. The mentally healthier you are, the healthier your relationship will be.

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 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Divorce

For entrepreneurial and inventive spouses considerations for divorce do not conclude with decisions regarding income to be calculated for child support or who inherits a spouse’s business debt. An often neglected, but uniformly important consideration is the topic of intellectual property

How is Intellectual Property Treated in Divorce

Intellectual Property is also called IP for short. It refers to the litany of legal rights that attach to an expressed idea. Put another way intellectual property is the legal defense of your mental work. Intellectual property can include copyrights, trademarks, or trade secrets.

When intellectual property becomes contentious, it usually rises from disagreements in valuation. Intellectual property is generally valued using the same determinations used to value real property. It is a complicated matter because of how IP is viewed legally. Intellectual property is viewed as unique and as such is appraised according to future market conditions.

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 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Divorce

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.

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 Posted on December 00, 0000 in Divorce

The realization that a marriage is coming to an end and a divorce is likely may catch many people by surprise. It is understandable to fight the reality that your marriage, which you vowed would last forever, just isn’t working.

No one goes into a marriage believing it could one day result in meetings with divorce lawyers, and discussions of alimony, child support or custody agreements. However, there are some signs that a divorce may be likely.

What are Some of the Signals of Divorce?

Whether your marriage lasted just a few months or several years, those that end in divorce tend to have one or more of these elements in common.

• No conflict resolution: Couples who can’t work together to solve problems either end up fighting as means of resolving their differences or just avoid the issues altogether.

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