Illinois Family Law Blog

With talk of many states considering overhauling their alimony and child support regulations, it's surprising that the Illinois Legislature is considering a move to update the state's child support laws. There is a sense among advocates of child support reform that the laws are outdated and should do more to reflect the complexity of today's family situations.

As Illinois law currently stands, the spouse that does not have custody of their children pays a set percentage of their income into child support. While simplicity is sometimes appreciated in the law, this is a case where many feel that this law does not appropriately calculate how much child support a spouse should pay.

We are talking about a recent decision by Canadian officials that has put at least one same-sex couple in a strange situation. The two women were married in 2005. They now want to divorce. The government says they can't.

In Illinois, civil unions are legal, but same-sex marriages are not. Even if the marriage is legal in the state where the couple exchanged vows, this state will not recognize it. If a man and a woman marry in Illinois, though, and follow the marriage laws of the state, they are more than likely able to divorce here as well.

Marriage and divorce laws differ from state to state, just as they differ between Canada and the United States. Generally, if your marriage is recognized in one state or one country, it will be recognized in another. And if you follow the laws of Illinois when you got married, you should be able to get divorced in Illinois, assuming again that you follow the divorce laws.

There are some notable exceptions to these rules of thumb. Same-sex marriages or civil unions, for example, are not recognized by all states. In Illinois, for example, same-sex marriage is not only prohibited, but it is not recognized here even if it is valid in the state where it was performed. That couple cannot file for divorce in this state, because this state doesn't consider them legally married.

After talking about annulment in our last post, we came across an unusual case involving an Illinois man and his Canadian wife. In divorce proceedings, the couple did not deny that they had never consummated the marriage. Usually, this would be grounds for an annulment, but that wasn't really an option -- because they had been married for 17 years.

The two married in 1993, but togetherness may not have been a high priority. By 2000, they had only cohabited for three months. A few years into the marriage, though, the husband became a U.S. citizen. For reasons not addressed in court documents, the wife, a Canadian citizen, never received a green card. (A green card allows a foreign national to live and work in the U.S. permanently. It does not grant citizenship.)

An article about annulment caught our attention recently, and not just because it talked about the small group of celebrities, including Janet Jackson and Kim Kardashian (if her husband gets his way), who have had marriages annulled. It gives us the opportunity to discuss the differences between annulment and divorce.

In our last post, we discussed the grounds for annulment here in Illinois. Here, we will talk about the financial aspects of annulment.

That's Janet Jackson and Kim Kardashian, two members of an exclusive group of celebrities. What is the common element that these women share with, among a handful of others, Renee Zellweger and Pamela Anderson? Some people will come close if they guess divorced after brief marriages. More accurately, though, all have gone through (or may go through, in Kardashian's case) the annulment of a marriage.

Divorce ends a marriage. An annulment, though, wipes the slate clean; it's as if the marriage never took place. The marriage is null and void.

Traditionally, the New Year brings a promise that better things are coming. The future is bright, and hope rebounds. But the New Year is also a time for reflection, and for some Chicago families that can mean big changes. January is the most common month for couples to file for divorce, and that can make the long winter months a lot more stressful.

For parents, the decision to divorce may not be the biggest or hardest one they'll make. They have to decide how to break the news to their kids.

Parents tend to focus on the "when" and the "word choice" decisions. But parenting experts would say they're skipping an important step: their children's ages.

There are few things more stressful for some people than the holidays. In cases of difficult custody negotiations or bitter divorces, a parent may be tempted to outdo his or her ex when it comes to gift giving. It is all too easy to lose sight of what's appropriate for a child when you're wandering down Chicago's Magnificent Mile and see the giant stuffed panda in a toy store window. That panda is bigger than anything your ex-spouse would buy, and, even if your child is just a toddler, into the shopping cart it goes.

In family law, the doctrine of the "best interest of the child" is applied in custody and visitation decisions. Child development experts say it should be applied when buying children toys, too.