Divorce Lawyers Palatine

The prospect of divorce can leave you emotionally drained – with no clear path forward. Fortunately, you don’t have to face the fallout alone. An experienced divorce lawyer in Palatine will help you better understand not only the divorce process but also how your case is likely to proceed – all while skillfully advocating for favorable divorce terms that uphold your financial and parental rights. 

Parental Responsibilities and Parenting Time

If your divorce involves children, the matter of child custody is a primary concern, and in Illinois, child custody is addressed in relation to both parental responsibilities and parenting time. Parental responsibilities refer to making important decisions that guide your children’s upbringing. The kinds of decisions involved include:

• Decisions about their healthcare needs
• Decisions about their schooling
• Decisions about their extracurriculars and travel
• Decisions about their religious upbringing

Parenting time, on the other hand, refers to the schedule by which you and your ex divide your time with the kids. The scheduling options – if you’re able to hammer out something between the two of you – are immense, but in the end, one of you will either become the primary custodial parent, or you’ll both divide your parenting time more evenly. 

Child Support

Once you and your ex have separate residences, you’ll need to address the matter of balancing financial support for your children between the two of you – based on your and your ex’s financial ability to do so. Child support is the tool Illinois uses to strike this balance, and while a wide range of factors can go into the calculation process, the primary matters include the amount of time that the children spend with each of you and your incomes relative to one another. In general – even if you divide parenting time equally – the parent who earns more is likely to pay child support to the other. 

The Division of Marital Property

In Illinois, marital property refers to those assets that you come to own while you are married – as opposed to the separate property that you bring into the marriage with you. Upon divorce, marital property must be divided between you equitably, which means fairly (when the involved circumstances are taken into careful consideration). Each spouse is entitled to his or her separate property, but when separate assets are intermingled with marital assets, they can lose their classification as separate. 

Spousal Maintenance

In Illinois, alimony is called spousal maintenance, and while it isn’t a concern in every divorce, it does play an important role in some. When the divorce leaves one spouse unable to support himself or herself financially, and the other has the income to help, spousal maintenance may be ordered.

An Experienced Divorce Lawyer in Palatine Can Help

The accomplished divorce lawyers at the SAM LAW OFFICE, LLC, in Palatine take great pride in their impressive track record of successfully guiding cases like yours toward beneficial resolutions that uphold our clients’ best interests. For more information about how we can also help you, please don’t hesitate to contact us today.