In family law mediation, it is not uncommon to hear the parties question their judgment regarding the difficult decision to proceed with divorce. I am often asked by one of the two individuals sitting in my office, “Don’t you think we make a cute couple?” or, “Aren’t we great together?” [...]
Traditionally couples divorce as adversaries, hiring separate attorneys to wrangle over child custody and support, maintenance, assets and anything else they care about, even the dog. It’s high stakes poker. Ante up: legal costs, kids, stress.
But there’s another way. Increasingly couples are turning to divorce mediation as a realistic [...]
Not all divorces are ugly. Some exes mediate instead of hiring pit bull attorneys, sit comfortably together at their kids’ school performances and maintain the same rules in each household.
Child support is paid on time. Neither parent speaks ill of the other in front of the children. Timeshares are flexible to support [...]
We’ve all heard about nasty divorces. Maybe a family member, friend or co-worker got caught up in one. Or maybe your own divorce turned bitter, where every little detail became a prolonged negotiation, where each party was geared up for a battle–and got it. The worst of these divorces is when [...]
One of the most consistent research findings that explore the effects of divorce on children is that the results are inconsistent. Yes, that is what I meant to write. Thirty years of scientific study have concluded that there are no simple answers to the question about how children will be affected [...]
Given the no-fault nature of most divorces, the issue of blame related to who caused the end of the marriage does not matter from a legal standpoint. However, during divorce proceedings, if one spouse has been unfaithful during the marriage, this information can affect the settlement outcome under certain conditions.
Extra-marital relationships [...]
In my almost 28 years on the bench — most of which I spent presiding over family matters in the Circuit Court of Lake County in Waukegan — I had a front-row seat for an amazing display of human nature. I met families in crisis, parents in stress, and children in trouble. They [...]
In today’s economic environment, it is a very difficult decision to opt for a divorce and end a dysfunctional relationship. Today there can be enough stress in people’s lives to make them hesitant to compound that problem by adding the stress of a divorce. However, there is a proven and slowly [...]
Myth: Mediation allows one spouse to dominate another.
Fact: A good mediator pays close attention to the power balance between the spouses and uses specific techniques to address any imbalance. If one spouse persists in dominating behavior, the mediator will call a stop to the mediation rather than allowing it to continue. One caveat: [...]
When a high-profile couple chooses to end their marriage, it becomes front-page news. There isn’t a person in American unaware of the recent happenings in the Schwarzenegger-Shriver household: Shriver has left their marriage after 25 years and four children. Recently, the water has been muddied with the disclosure that Schwarzenegger fathered [...]
