Kansas City Divorce & Family Law Blog by Stange Law Firm, PC

Property division in an Illinois divorce begins with a classification question: Is the asset marital or nonmarital? Only after that question is addressed can the parties meaningfully evaluate valuation and division. For Des Plaines spouses, the answer is not always obvious from the name on an account or deed. A retirement account may contain both premarital and marital contributions. A home purchased before marriage may have been refinanced during the marriage. An inheritance may have moved through several accounts. A business may have existed before the wedding but grown substantially during the marriage. Illinois Uses Equitable Distribution Illinois is an

“Contested” and “uncontested” are useful shorthand, but they can make divorce sound more binary than it really is. A Wheeling couple might agree that the marriage should end while disagreeing about one financial issue. Another couple might begin with several disputes and settle every issue before trial. For Cook County residents of Wheeling, the more practical question is: What remains unresolved? The answer determines how much negotiation, discovery, motion practice, mediation, or trial preparation may be necessary. What Makes a Divorce Uncontested? An uncontested dissolution generally means the spouses have reached agreement on the issues necessary to enter a final

A high-income household does not necessarily create a complicated divorce. Complexity usually comes from the structure of the assets and income. An Arlington Heights couple may have a closely held company, professional practice, investment real estate, concentrated stock positions, deferred compensation, retirement plans, or assets acquired both before and during the marriage. In those cases, the central work is often financial: identifying what exists, determining whether it is marital or nonmarital, valuing difficult assets, tracing separate-property claims, and considering the tax and liquidity consequences of different settlement structures. Start With Classification: Marital or Nonmarital? Illinois generally treats property acquired during

For parents, the end of a marriage does not end the need to make decisions together about a child. It changes the legal structure in which those decisions are made. In Illinois, the law generally speaks in terms of “parenting time” and “allocation of parental responsibilities” rather than the older terms custody and visitation. For Hoffman Estates parents whose cases proceed in Cook County, a parenting case can involve much more than deciding how many overnights each parent receives. The court may need to address significant decisions, school schedules, transportation, holidays, activities, communication, support, and the process the parents will

A decision to end a marriage usually raises several questions at once: Where will the case be filed? What happens to the home and retirement accounts? How will parenting time work? Will maintenance or child support be an issue? For residents of the Cook County portion of Schaumburg, those questions are governed primarily by Illinois law and the procedures of the Circuit Court of Cook County. A useful first step is not trying to predict the final result. It is identifying the issues that actually exist in the marriage and gathering the information needed to address them. A Schaumburg household