Posted on January 31, 2014 in High Asset Divorce

Prenuptial agreements are an excellent way to protect your assets as you enter into a new marriage. With a relatively high divorce rate in this country, many Illinois residents are considering their second marriage.

Second marriages can be difficult for many people. For one thing, many couples who are on their second marriage are further along in life and have acquired a greater amount of assets and wealth. They may also have special considerations from the first marriage to consider, such as maintaining control of assets they wish to give to their children, for example. While these issues can be resolved in a high asset divorce, they can be handled much more quickly through the use of a prenuptial agreement.

Many people in their second marriage, then, choose to pursue a prenuptial agreement. A prenuptial agreement allows couples to dictate certain terms of a potential divorce before the marriage begins.

Prenuptial agreements are a difficult topic to broach for many soon-to-be spouses. This is because the prenuptial agreement is often considered just when a couple is planning their wedding. Many are unwilling to commit to a prenuptial agreement, feeling as that it is unnecessary.

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 Posted on January 24, 2014 in Alimony

In recent years, the concept of spousal support - better known as alimony - has come under attack by those who feel that society has outgrown the system. Spousal support is a legal agreement by which one spouse (in about 95 percent of cases, the male) is asked to pay a certain amount of money each month to his or her former spouse.

Alimony can have two different purposes. Temporary alimony lasts a certain number of months or years. It is intended to give the nonworking spouse time to gain the skills he or she needs to re-enter the job market.

Long-term or permanent alimony is intended to allow the nonworking spouse the ability to maintain the lifestyle he or she had before the divorce. The rationale for this type of alimony is that the nonworking spouse sacrificed multiple economic opportunities by exiting the job market; the alimony is intended to compensate the spouse for these lost opportunities.

Proponents of alimony reform argue that the process was created when divorce required an "at-fault" party and still supports that idea. Reformers argue that the alimony system provides nonworking spouses with an incentive to stay out of the workforce, harming the economy as a whole.

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 Posted on January 15, 2014 in Child Support

Here in Illinois and across the country, the laws governing child custody and child support change and shift from year to year, as state lawmakers work to adapt our laws to a changing society and seek out better ways to serve the interests of the child. Most of these new laws are incremental and enter the law books without much public notice. A recent child support bill in another state, however, recently garnered national attention.

The bill was created in the Wisconsin state legislature by a single representative. Ostensibly, the bill seeks to equalize the rights of the sexes in child support disputes. Some observers, however, have noticed a supposed ulterior motive in the wording of the new bill.

The bill puts a cap on the amount of child support that can be awarded in any given situation. If the bill were made into law, any income over $150,000 would be exempted from consideration when calculating child support. It would also alter many current child support agreements that do not fit the new standard.

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 Posted on January 08, 2014 in Child Support

The Congressional Research Service recently released new statistics outlining the current state of child support payments in America. The CRS is a nonpartisan organization that serves only the U.S.Congress, providing our nation's lawmakers with the information they need to shape our country's laws. The new report, then, is a snapshot of the state of the nation's child support system.

All the data comes from 2011, which is the most recent year for which data was available. The statistics show that there are over 14 million parents who do not live together. Half of these parents are noncustodial parents, who pay child support, and half are custodial parents, who receive support payments on behalf of the child.

Unfortunately, statistics show that many of these custodial parents are having difficulty receiving the full amount that they are owed. In 2011, over $23 billion was sent as child support. This is, however, only a portion of the full amount that is owed. The CRS report shows that less than 40 percent of custodial parents received the full amount that they were owed.

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 Posted on January 03, 2014 in High Asset Divorce

Often, people assume that a divorce is always doomed to devolve into a shouting match. Those who have never been through the process tend to believe that the legal actions are always taken in an open court, where skeletons are dragged out of the closet and dire accusations are leveled.

The truth is quite different. Many divorces are done out-of-court, using a settlement that is privately determined between the two parties and their attorneys.

It is a fact, however, that the divorce can bring on a great deal of negative feelings and acrimony between spouses. This acrimony can lead to disagreements that can hamper the negotiations process, making it more difficult to reach an agreement in a timely manner.

This is especially true in cases of high asset divorce, where a large number of valuable assets must be divided. The divorce settlement in these cases can be extremely complex; failure to cooperate can slow the negotiations to a crawl.

Cooperation can be hard to come by during a divorce, however. One expert recently released a number of guidelines for helping spouses deal with their negative feelings.

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 Posted on December 27, 2013 in Child Support

When a noncustodial father writes a check for child support each month, most people would assume that all the money goes straight to the custodial parent - or, more specifically, to the basic needs of the child. That is, after all, what child support is for, to provide for the needs of the children.

However, the truth is that under certain circumstances, only a portion of that child support reaches its intended destination. Here in Illinois, if the child is benefitting from government welfare programs, then a large percentage of the child support payment will be intercepted by the government.

Many families with separated parents make use of government welfare programs. When they do, the government expects to be repaid for the service as much as possible. So, when the noncustodial parent makes a child support payment, the state of Illinois takes all but $50 out of the check.

This means noncustodial parents, many of whom must work very hard to make their child support payments, only see a fraction of their efforts going directly to support their children.

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 Posted on December 20, 2013 in High Asset Divorce

It's a commonly-held belief that 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. According to a recent article in the New York Times, however, that's no longer the case. After years of harboring a 50 percent divorce rate, the number has begun to decline in America, dropping to just above 40 percent. The trend was observed in all age groups, except for one - baby boomers.

This is a surprising statistic. Many baby boomers in Illinois and other states have been married for years – decades, even. But over the past 20 years, the divorce rate among baby boomers has increased by a whopping 50 percent.

The reasons for this are complex and various. A sociology professor at the University of Washington recently advanced her opinions on the subject, suggesting a number of reasons why baby boomers may be ending their marriages.

One key factor, according to the sociologist, is the time in which the baby boomers were born. Boomers' parents were part of a more traditional age. The boomers themselves, however, lived through a period of transition. They were part of the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement and anti-war movements. Women's rights were also addressed during their time, an issue that led many to question the traditional role of marriage in our society.

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 Posted on December 11, 2013 in Child Custody

As many in Illinois are aware, determining child custody can be a long and difficult process. There are a number of extremely important decisions that need to be made, decisions that will have life changing consequences for all parties involved.

When the child custody agreement must be made across state lines, however, the issues can become even more complex. Problems with jurisdiction and visitation can arise, as well as the logistical issues that come from traveling between court appearances.

These are the problems faced by Olympic skier Bode Miller, who is currently embroiled in a child custody dispute that recently reached its eleventh month. Unusually, the cross-state dispute began even before the child was born.

When Miller's girlfriend, Sara McKenna, was seven months pregnant, she moved from southern California, where Miller lived, to New York, where she aspired to attend graduate school. A co-parenting agreement had not yet been decided when she left the state.

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 Posted on December 06, 2013 in High Asset Divorce

Contrary to popular belief, divorce is not solely the domain of young couples. While many spouses do get divorced in the first few years of marriage, making it five or ten years does not necessarily mean the union will last forever. In some cases, couples who have been together for decades - couples that outwardly seem to be happily married - may realize that their marriage should not continue.

The reasons for this are varied, but the trend seems to be on the rise, both here in the U.S. and abroad in Europe.

One reasons that older couples may get a divorce could be attributed to the so-called "empty nest syndrome." When a couple's children leave the house, often they have to go through a period of enormous change, as the focus of their lives shift away from child-rearing. Often, spouses have difficulty adjusting to the new social dynamics of living without children. In other cases, spouses may realize that they have different opinions on their goals and dreams, now that the children are out of the house.

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 Posted on November 29, 2013 in High Asset Divorce

For many years, prenuptial agreements have been viewed as a tool only for the wealthy. In recent years, that perception has been shifting; many couples who are marrying later in life, or marrying for the second time, use the document as a way to protect their personal assets before entering into marriage. Though still far from common, prenuptial agreements are used by couples with average wealth as well as the rich and famous.

It's the rich and famous, however, who get the media attention, and it's perhaps this fact that leads viewers to conclude that prenuptial agreements are only for the wealthy.

Recently, one of the wealthiest people in the world, Rupert Murdoch, put a prenuptial agreement into use in preparation for his third divorce. He and his wife Wendi Deng recently separated after a marriage lasting 14 years. They have two children together, girls aged 10 and 11.

Murdoch and Deng, with the assistance of family law attorneys, prepared their divorce in private, meaning the terms of the separation or not open for public viewing. According to the New York Daily News, however, a prenuptial agreement signed before the wedding ensures that Rupert Murdoch not cede any control of his vast media empire to his ex-wife. Though she will likely be given a portion of the Murdoch fortune, neither she nor her children will have voting rights in any of Murdoch's businesses.

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