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One in Seven Divorces Caused by Social Media
The use of technology and social media to connect with others has been an increasing cause of divorce across the country, and the world, for a number of years as more spouses use social media websites. In fact, a new survey conducted by the company Censuswide shows that nearly one in every seven divorces occurs because of social media.
Example of Social Media Divorce
One woman in Chicago admitted to the survey researchers that her addiction to social media was a major contributing cause to her divorce. She spent nearly five hours every day on Facebook and other social media sites after she started to build her online presence for her event-planning business. She mentioned that the time spent on social media should have been used to cook dinner, read to her kids, or even watch a movie or talk with her spouse.
Illinois Divorce and Property Distribution
One of the biggest issues that arises during the divorce process is the distribution of property to each spouse. Who gets the house, cars, furniture, personal effects, and more must all be agreed upon by the spouses or the court in a divorce. Illinois decides issues of property through a process known as “equitable distribution.”
Equitable Distribution
The purpose behind an equitable distribution of property is to divide the property accumulated as a married couple in a fair and equitable way. It is important to note that fair does not always mean equal; therefore, one spouse may receive more in the distribution of property if a judge deems it to be fair.
The equitable distribution of property only applies to marital property. It does not apply to the non-marital property of each spouse. Illinois code section 750 ILCS 5/503 defines non-marital property, marital property, and how to convert one type of property to the other.
The Putative Father Registry: Protecting Fathers’ Rights
In Illinois, the state adoption agency is required to notify fathers if their children are being placed for adoption. All putative fathers, or men who might be a child’s father but were not married to the child’s mother at the time of birth, are encouraged to register in the Putative Father Registry in order to have a say in a potential adoption of their child.
The Putative Father Registry is also designed to serve families who want to adopt, for social workers and other professionals working on an adoption case, and for any other party who has an interest in finding out whether a child is ‘legally free’ for adoption. Moreover, the Registry is ultimately there to help children be placed with adoptive parents.
Asserting Your Rights as a Father
To ensure that your child is not adopted without your input, you should first register with the Putative Father Registry. However, this is only the first step in establishing and protecting your rights. You must also go through a legal process to establish your paternity, and you must begin this process within 30 days of registering.
Imputed Income for Child Support
Even though parents can and do choose to end their relationship with each other, the parental bond with their children endures. Both parents are legally obligated to support their children, even if they do not choose to maintain a relationship with them. Because of this continuing obligation, child support issues are often the most intensely contested areas during a divorce or custody proceeding.
Some parents attempt to hide income, or reduce their income by taking a lower-paying job, just to reduce the amount of child support that they are required to pay. Doing so, however, can lead to trouble with the law.
Illinois law has provided a mechanism for judges, who suspect that parents are trying to avoid their duty to pay child support, to bring parents into line. This mechanism, known as imputing income, involves assigning a higher salary to a parent than they actually earn.
Long Distance Visitation: Making it Work
For divorced parents who live far apart, or even in different states, the challenge of finding a visitation schedule that works for both parents, is acceptable to a judge, and serves the child’s best interests can be a daunting task. The complications of divorce and custody determinations are made even more complex when one parent moves for work or other reasons.
In Illinois, a parent with custody must seek and obtain the approval of a family law judge before moving out of state with his or her child. Often, the proposed visitation plan is the sticking point in an otherwise workable removal plan. If the parents will live so far apart that a long drive, bus ride, or even flight separates their two homes, the plan for the child’s transportation must be carefully thought out and easy to put into practice. For example, parents wishing to live in Chicago and New York, respectively, would have an easier time convincing a judge that travel for the child is reasonable, because of the easy access to major airports. Parents wishing to send a child for visitation from Springfield, Illinois, to Amarillo, Texas, for example, would have a much tougher time because of the relative complexity and length of travel between the two less-connected cities. If airfare, train tickets, bus, or driving costs are prohibitive, or the distance is just too far to be crossed in a reasonable time frame, this could also derail a removal plan.
Rights and Responsibilities of Birth Parents
The adoption of a child can be exciting and stressful at the same time. To reduce the strain on both birth parents and adoptive parents, it helps for all parties to know their rights.
As a birth parent in Illinois, you have the right to be treated with dignity and respect at all times, and make decisions without being coerced or pressured. You can choose to work with social service agencies while you are deciding whether to place your child for adoption. You are allowed to work with an adoption agency or attorney of your choice, and you can change to a different agency or attorney at any time, as long as you inform all involved parties promptly.
No one working at these agencies, or working with you on your adoption, can share your identifying information without your permission. In rare cases, your information could be shared for a very good reason, if required by Illinois law or directed by a court order. Non-identifying social, medical, and mental health information about you and your family will be shared in an adoption that is facilitated by an agency, and can be shared in private adoptions. You are free to include your family and friends in any meetings you have with the agency or attorney.
Common Causes of Divorce
Former spouses may find it difficult to put their finger on a specific event that foreshadowed the end of their marriage. Yet for others, changes in their lives can be easily identified. Common developments that can prompt the breakdown of a marriage include job loss, childbirth, living apart, trauma, illness, children leaving the home and infidelity.
Reasons for Separating
Changes to a spouse’s job, especially layoffs or severe reductions of hours or pay, are a common factor in the deterioration of marriages. Studies show that unemployed spouses are more likely to leave or be left by the other spouse. Understandably, the loss of a job by one or both partners in a marriage can cause stress about finances and can easily translate into marital dissatisfaction. Changes to work schedules can impact how couples spend time together, de-prioritizing a marriage in order to focus on work responsibilities can cause in isolation and resentment between spouses.
The Impact of Infidelity on Alimony in Illinois
One of the most hotly contested aspects of divorce proceedings is alimony, also known as spousal support. The process of coming to an agreement on how much, if anything, one spouse must pay the other spouse following divorce forces spouses to examine their respective contributions to the marriage.
With two-earner households as the norm, the process of teasing out how much each spouse contributed, both financially and through their responsibilities in the home, can be intensely complicated. Throw in sacrifices made by one spouse to support the wellbeing of the whole family, such as working two jobs to put the other spouse through school or training, and the balance required by alimony becomes even harder to strike.
Alimony is a device used under Illinois law to ensure that when spouses part ways, they are on relatively equal ground financially. Because marriage is a joint venture, in which couples share the burden of financial hardship and the benefit of economic success, the end of a marriage is viewed by judges as an opportunity to ensure that fairness is achieved through the process.
Eavesdropping, Spyware, and Wiretapping in Divorce Proceedings
Divorce can be messy, and some couples will stop at nothing to “get back at” one another for wrongs that have been done during a marriage. However, some actions that divorcing spouses undertake go beyond the bounds of the law, including intercepting private communications.
Under federal and Illinois law, wiretapping is illegal. When one spouse eavesdrops on the other’s conversations by tapping into their phone line, the guilty party can face jail time and hefty civil penalties. The spouse whose privacy rights have been violated can seek equitable relief, such as an injunction, declaratory relief, which affirms that what the other party has done is wrong, compensation for any economic damages suffered, and punitive damages which aim to make the responsible party hurt financially.
Responsibilities for Child Support with a Second Family
NOTE: As of July 2017, the law governing child support in Illinois has changed. Please see our Child Support page for more information.
If you have an order for child support from a previous marriage, it can create complications for a second marriage. Child support orders do not get combined or averaged. Instead, they are stacked on top of one another. If you are currently paying child support for your first family, and you have children from a later relationship, you may be concerned about the potential for being doubly obligated for child support purposes. Therefore, it is wise to consult a family lawyer to get a handle on your legal responsibilities and rights.
One avenue that is often open to parents who have child support obligations to more than one family is modification of a child support order. A change may be approved by a family law judge if there has been a substantial shift in circumstances. Changes that can lead to reduction in child support often include reduced earnings.
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