Oak Brook Divorce Lawyer

Oak Brook Divorce Lawyer

Divorce represents the dissolution of your marriage contract, and as a transition, it is as significant as it is difficult. If you are facing a divorce, you don’t have to face it alone; an experienced Oak Brook divorce lawyer is on your side. 

The Divorce Basics

Your divorce will be specific to your family and your situation, but the building blocks of divorce remain the same for every couple who goes through it. At its core, divorce can be broken down into two main categories that include your finances and your parental rights. Let’s take a closer look.

Your Finances

One of the most consequential aspects of divorce is the financial impact it can have on your future, which makes protecting your financial rights throughout the divorce process critical. The divorce terms that affect your finances most directly include:

• Division of Marital Assets– Marital assets are those assets that you and your spouse accumulated over the course of your marriage. Even if your finances are fairly straightforward, the division of your marital assets can be exceptionally complicated. Generally, the property that you bring into your marriage with you and keep separate throughout will remain your separate property, but the line between separate and marital property can be easily blurred. In Illinois, marital assets are intended to be divided equitably, which means fairly in relation to the circumstances involved. 
• Spousal Maintenance– Spousal maintenance (often referred to as alimony) is ordered only when divorce leaves one spouse with a financial deficit that the other spouse has the financial means to offset. Usually, spousal maintenance amounts to temporary payments that are intended to help the financially disadvantaged spouse find his or her financial bearings.  In long marriages, spousal support may be permanent

Your Parental Rights

Your parental rights are always a high priority when it comes to divorce, and in the State of Illinois, these break down as follows:

• Parental Responsibilities – Parental responsibilities correlate with what you may think of as legal custody, and it refers to who will be making the big-picture decisions for your children after your divorce. Parental responsibilities (or decision-making authority) can be either sole or joint, and the decisions involved relate to matters such as your children’s education, religious upbringing, health care, and extracurriculars.
• Parenting Plan – Your parenting plan correlates with what you may think of as physical custody and visitation. If you and your divorcing spouse are able to find mutually acceptable terms that work for you and your children, the court is nearly certain to accept them. Your time with your children can be split fairly equally, or the children might live primarily with one or the other of you and have what amounts to a visitation schedule with the other.   In the event you cannot agree, the court will help facilitate an agreement by requiring custody mediation and/or by appointing a guardian ad litem.  If these measures fail to yield an agreement, the court will make custody decisions based on its determination of the minor children’s best interests.   

An Experienced Oak Brook Divorce Lawyer Can Help

Cameron H. Goodman at Goodman Law Firm is an accomplished Oak Brook divorce lawyer who has considerable experience helping clients like you obtain divorce terms that support their financial interests and parental rights. To learn more about how we can help you, please don’t hesitate to contact us today