Many people aspire to notoriety. However, few realize that there are also downsides to being in the public eye. Many recognizable individuals find themselves subject to public scrutiny and privacy violations. If you or your spouse are well-known, you may have concerns about how you can protect your privacy during divorce. The end of your marriage is a deeply personal matter, and it should never serve as entertainment or gossip for others. Fortunately, there are several steps that you can take to protect yourself in a high-profile divorce.

Consider Using a Non-Disclosure Agreement

A confidentiality agreement or non-disclosure agreement is a contract that requires parties to keep certain information confidential. During your divorce, you will likely share detailed information about your real estate holdings, investments, businesses, and other assets. You will also share information about any debts and liabilities you are subject to. Keeping private financial information like this confidential is a top priority in a high-profile divorce. Furthermore, information about your personal life may come to light during a divorce. Medical and psychological records, the results of child custody evaluations, and information about marital infidelity are just some examples of the personal topics that may be brought up during the divorce. A confidentiality agreement can be used to prohibit third parties from divulging confidential information. If a party violates the contract, the non-breaching party may be entitled to legal remedies including monetary damages.

Alternative Resolution Methods May Help You Avoid a Divorce Trial

When a divorcing couple cannot agree on property division, child custody, spousal maintenance, or other divorce issues, the case may go to trial. Most civil trials are a matter of public record. This means that your personal information may be available for anyone to view. If you can reach an out-of-court settlement through an alternative resolution method, you can avoid going to trial.

More and more older couples are getting divorced. Recent trends show that individuals in their 50s, 60s, and even 70s are choosing to leave their marriages and pursue a happier post-divorce future. Going through a divorce after a long marriage and getting divorced at an older age both come with certain complications and obstacles. If you are over age 50 and thinking about divorce, educating yourself about your rights and responsibilities is one way to avoid costly mistakes.

Remaining Ignorant of Your Finances

Ending a marriage is as much a financial separation as it is a personal separation. Typically, the longer a couple has been married, the more assets and debt they have accumulated. You and your spouse may own complex assets, investments, and retirement accounts that will need to be properly valued during a divorce. The lines between separate property, which legally belongs to only one spouse, and marital property, which belongs to both spouses, may have been blurred considerably. One way to prepare for divorce is to start inventorying your assets. Gather copies of tax returns, bank statements, credit card information, pay stubs, loan documents, retirement account information, life insurance paperwork, and other important financial documents. When you know exactly what you and your spouse own, you are in a much better position to negotiate a fair property division settlement.

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.

Several years ago, Illinois enacted considerable changes to the way child custody is allocated to divorced or unmarried parents. The terms child custody and visitation have been replaced by “parental responsibilities” and “parenting time” respectively. This change is intended to represent parenting authority as a spectrum instead of an either-or situation in which one parent is the custodial parent and the other parent only receives visitation. If you are planning to divorce, you and your spouse may design whatever type of parenting arrangement you see fit. However, if you cannot agree on a parenting plan, the court will determine a plan for you. In order to do so, the court will consider the best interests of the child.  

What Does “Best Interests” Mean?

If there is a dispute about the allocation of parental responsibilities and parenting time, Illinois courts use a series of factors called “best interest factors” to determine what type of parenting arrangement would be best for the child. The best interest factors the court considers when allocating decision-making authority include but are not limited to:

When a couple decides to divorce, issues such as the division of marital assets and debts and the allocation of parental responsibilities and parenting time must be resolved. Some couples are able to reach a settlement agreement about the terms of their divorce through negotiations or alternative resolution methods such as mediation and collaborative divorce. Others, however, cannot reach a solution that both spouses agree to. If a divorcing couple cannot reach an agreement about one or more of the relevant divorce issues, the case may go to trial.

The Fact Gathering Phase

The “discovery” phase occurs prior to the divorce trial. During discovery, each party and his or her respective attorney will gather information about the unresolved divorce issues. Several methods may be used to gather financial data and other relevant information, including: