Divorce brings about a number of financial implications. If you are a parent planning to divorce, one of the most pressing financial concerns you may be facing is your child’s college education. Public and private university tuition has skyrocketed in the last several decades. While you were married, you probably assumed that you and your spouse would finance your child’s college education together. Now that your Illinois marriage is ending, you may be unsure of how to deal with college-related costs for your son or daughter.

Child Support May Extend into College Years

When most people think about child support, they assume that a recipient parent is only entitled to support while the child is still a minor. However, an Illinois child support obligation may extend past the child’s 18th birthday if he or she is still in school. Illinois law gives courts the authority to allocate college-related expenses to unmarried or divorced parents. These expenses typically include tuition, textbook rental, course fees, housing, and healthcare. In many cases, a divorced couple’s marital settlement agreement addresses how college expenses should be handled.

Finances have a tremendous impact on divorce. Without accurate, up-to-date financial information, it is impossible to negotiate a fair divorce settlement. This is why each spouse is required to complete a financial affidavit during the first stages of the Illinois divorce process. Unfortunately, not every spouse is truthful when filling out the affidavit. Spouses may lie about their income, assets, debts, and expenses in order to sway the divorce settlement in their own favor. Doing this is not only unethical, it is also unlawful. An experienced divorce attorney can help protect your rights to marital assets.

Hiding Assets By Transferring Funds

One of the easiest ways to hide money during a divorce is to simply move the funds into a bank account that the other spouse is not aware of. A spouse who wants to artificially lower his or her net worth may transfer money from joint accounts into separate accounts. He or she may even transfer assets to a friend or relative with the understanding that the loan is temporary and that the money will be returned after the divorce. Another way spouses may try to transfer money under the radar is by getting cash back on everyday purchases like groceries. Doing this once or twice will not make a major impact, but over time, thousands of dollars may be transferred into cash this way.

Divorce is already difficult enough. Adding the stress of being in the public eye can make the divorce process even more daunting. If you or your spouse is well-known or you simply value your privacy, you may have concerns about confidentiality during a divorce. One legal tool for protecting your privacy during your Illinois divorce is a confidentiality agreement. A confidentiality agreement or non-disclosure agreement is a legal contract that prohibits parties from sharing certain information. If a party breaches the contract, the non-breaching party may be entitled to damages. Confidentiality agreements are often a crucial component in protecting privacy during a high-profile divorce.

When Should A Divorcing Couple Utilize a Confidentiality Agreement?

If you are ending your marriage, you will likely be divulging financial data and other sensitive information during the divorce process. You may even participate in a psychological evaluation, medical evaluation, or home study for child custody-related purposes. Details about marital misconduct such as an affair may also come up during the divorce. If you are a business owner, you may be divulging information like business financials, practices, client information, or other proprietary information. Understandably, you may be worried about this type of information falling into the wrong hands. Information you share with your attorney is already protected under attorney-client privilege. However, any information you share with third parties such as accountants is not automatically protected. A confidentiality agreement can be used to keep confidential information from being shared with the media or other parties.

If you are a parent who is planning to divorce, you may be unsure of how you and your spouse will share parental responsibilities and parenting time. You and your soon-to-be ex-spouse may not see eye to eye about parenting roles or what is best for your child and you are worried about how this will affect your ability to share custody. Fortunately, you and your spouse have the ability to design your own custody arrangement that takes your complicated relationship into consideration. There are two main strategies when it comes to sharing parental responsibilities and parenting time: co-parenting and parallel parenting.  

Co-Parenting Involves Collaboration and Teamwork

The term co-parenting is typically used to refer to situations in which divorced or unmarried parents work together to raise their children. They may communicate about the children regularly and keep each other up to date about what happened during their parenting time. The co-parenting relationship is often complex in nature. Each parent can still have some residual anger or resentment toward the other. They may also sometimes disagree with the parenting decisions that the other parent makes. However, both parents strive to be amicable and cooperative.

“Gray divorce” or divorce at an older age is remarkably common in the United States. More and more often, couples in their 50s, 60s, and 70s are choosing to end their marriages and pursue a happier future apart. Making the decision to divorce is difficult regardless of age. However, when a couple over age 50 gets divorced, there are often additional considerations and concerns. If you are an older adult who is thinking about filing for divorce, it is important to educate yourself about the issues you may face.

Legal Considerations and Financial Issues in a Gray Divorce

Divorce involving older adults is often more complicated than divorce involving younger spouses for several reasons. One of these reasons is that older spouses typically own complex assets and assets of a higher value than younger spouses. Before you and your spouse can divide marital property during divorce, a full inventory of your assets will need to be taken. You may also need to have certain assets such as small businesses and investments professionally valued. Retirement funds are an especially crucial issue in gray divorce. Generally, both spouses have a right to any retirement funds that accumulated during the course of the marriage. However, valuing retirement assets and determining how to divide retirement accounts is often more difficult than spouses expect.

It is also very possible that you or your spouse will be entitled to spousal maintenance or alimony. Maintenance if often awarded to spouses who sacrificed career advancement and educational opportunities to perform homemaking or child caretaking services. The amount of alimony a spouse may receive in Illinois is typically determined by statutory formula and calculated based on each spouse’s net income. The duration of spousal maintenance is usually based on the length of the marriage. Divorcing spouses who were married for 20 years or more may be entitled to permanent maintenance.