Vernon Hills Illinois Family Law Blog

We are always told to prioritize our health. Whether it’s our mental health or our physical body, we need to take care of ourselves first. However, our priorities tend to skew when we are going through challenging circumstances, such as divorce.

It’s critical to take a step back and recognize how a divorce could damage your health and makes you feel worse during a difficult period. Once you know what to look out for, you can treat it before it becomes a problem.

Some people in Illinois who are getting a divorce may suspect a spouse of hiding cryptocurrency assets. This can be particularly easy to do if the cryptocurrency is purchased directly and then moved offline. However, penalties for hiding assets in a divorce could include getting fewer marital assets and going to jail for contempt of court.

Even when a person purchases cryptocurrency through an online exchange, which is less difficult to trace, the process of finding it can be costly in time and money. Many experts lack experience in cryptocurrency although one certified financial forensics accountant reported finding $100,000 in cryptocurrency assets that a man did not report by examining bank statements.

Legal changes over the past years have affected the way spousal support or maintenance is calculated in Illinois. Maintenance, once known as alimony, is a post-divorce payment from one spouse to the other to help provide a financial equalizer, especially when there is a significant earning disparity between the parties. Before 2015, maintenance payments were awarded at the discretion of the court, taking into account a range of factors such as each party's income and property, their respective earning capacities and the length of the marriage.

While the basis for this model was sound, it often resulted in widely disparate decisions from one case to another. Therefore, the Illinois legislature revised the laws relating to spousal maintenance for couples earning $250,000 each year or less by determining a formula for spousal maintenance that applies to these couples. In 2018, that was expanded to encompass couples earning $500,000 or less each year.

There are a number of reasons why people in Illinois may decide to end their marriage, but some are more common than others. One study examined people who had participated in a premarital communication program but later divorced; they were asked about the reasons for their divorce 14 years after their original involvement with the program. The study aimed to understand what kinds of issues contributed most to their decision to separate.

The vaguest answer was also the most common, as 75 percent of respondents cited a lack of commitment as a reason for their divorce. There were many reasons that contributed to that feeling, including a loss of romantic or sexual attraction. Some couples grew apart over the years, while others may have married more due to social pressure than true desire. Another 59 percent of respondents said that infidelity was a major factor in their decision to divorce. Even when people already had a poor marriage, physical cheating was often the last step toward separation. In some cases, the affair itself was the primary issue while in other cases it reflected a broken relationship.