Divorce Attorney Downers Grove

Divorce Attorney Downers Grove

Every divorce – just like every marriage – is unique to the two people involved. Divorce is understandably stressful, but it also represents an important transition that requires significant attention. In the end, your parental and financial rights are simply too important not to carefully prepare for your divorce, and having the skilled legal representation of an experienced divorce attorney in Downers Grove on your side is a great place to start. 

The Primary Elements of Your Divorce

Your divorce will proceed according to a variety of factors that are unique to your situation. Nevertheless, every divorce addresses the same primary elements, including:

• Parenting Time and Parental Rights
• Division of Marital Property
• Child Support
• Spousal Maintenance

While every divorce involves its own complications, several factors that tend to make divorce that much more difficult include:

• High assets
• Business ownership
• Domestic abuse
• A significant divide between where both parties stand on the primary issues of divorce

Matters Related to the Children

If you have shared children, the divorce matters that relate directly to them can become very complicated very quickly. The basic components of these matters include:

• Parenting Time and Parental Responsibilities – Both parenting time and parental responsibilities can be either sole or joint. Parenting time has to do with the schedule by which the children live with each parent. Parenting responsibilities, on the other hand, have to do with who makes important decisions on behalf of the children, including decisions about their education, their medical care, their extracurriculars, and their religious education. 
• Child Support – Child support is the state’s tool for helping to ensure that both parents contribute financially to their children’s ongoing support, and it is generally predicated on state calculation guidelines (although the court has wide discretion in the matter). If a child has special needs, for example, the court is more likely to calculate child support outside the parameters of the guidelines. 

Matters Related to Finances

The other elements of your divorce are financially based. The primary financial concern tends to be the division of your marital property, which refers to those assets that you amassed over the course of your marriage – without regard to who made the purchase or whose name is attached. 

The assets that you bring with you into your marriage will remain separate if you keep them separate throughout your marriage, but doing so can be a difficult task, especially if you aren’t specifically thinking about keeping your assets separate over the years. 

Spousal maintenance (often called alimony) is a financial matter that doesn’t have a place in all divorces. If, however, the court determines that one spouse will be financially deprived post-divorce and that the other spouse has the financial means to help, it may turn to spousal maintenance to help bridge the financial gap. 

Consult with an Experienced Divorce Attorney in Downers Grove Today

Cameron H. Goodman at Goodman Law Firm in Downers Grove is a seasoned divorce attorney with more than 20 years of experience guiding his client’s often-complicated cases toward beneficial resolutions. To learn more, please don’t wait to contact us today.