Anderson & Boback Family Law Attorneys

Typically, you’d want to avoid a default when you are going through a divorce in Chicago because if not, then the way your marital estate is divided is out of your hands. Recently a client hired us to help her in avoiding a default in a divorce action. Case Background Our client’s spouse filed for divorce at the end of 2020. She was personally served with divorce papers a month later but did not see any court date listed on the documents she received. As a result, she didn’t take any action. She was also dealing with a lot of health concerns and thought that she could put everything on the backburner, like everything else, because of COVID-19. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a lot of confusion about how certain entities were adapting to our new norm. Our client just assumed that the courts were put on hold, just like everything else around her. Unfortunately, since she didn’t hire an attorney right away, no one was there to tell her otherwise. It wasn’t until she was serve...

Spousal support is often a contentious issue in marriages that are substantial in length, where one spouse has outearned the other spouse.  Spousal support (formerly called alimony and often referred to as maintenance) is the payment of money from one spouse to another during and/or after divorce proceedings.   How is Spousal Support Determined in Illinois? The first step in determining spousal support or spousal maintenance is to determine if the divorce case qualifies.  In Illinois, the divorce court considers many factors when determining if a case is a “spousal support” or “maintenance” case, including the length of the party’s marriage, the income history of both parties, the future prospective income potential of both parties, their health, their need, their education level, their age, and more.  Once the case is deemed a maintenance case, there are two different components that factor into the calculation or formula for spousal support. The first factor i...

  There is a lot of disagreement about vaccinations for children and the argument between parents with differing views on this subject is not a new one.  Illinois family law attorneys representing parents in this type of disagreement have worked throughout the years to avoid the problem in its entirety by addressing the issue of vaccination in the parenting agreement, now called an Allocation Judgment.  A prior agreement on how to handle vaccinations will give clarity as parents deal with the COVID-19 vaccine.   COVID-19 Vaccine Questions from Divorced Parents There are a number of questions and co-parenting issues surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine. Here are five of the most frequently asked questions we are seeing in our Chicago family law practice: 1. What If the Other Parent Will Not Get the COVID-19 Vaccine? We just saw a judge in Cook County strip a mother of her parenting time because she had not received the COVID-19 vaccine.  The parents were before...