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How to Make Holidays Happy When You Are a Single Parent
Getting through the holidays when you are married and have children can sometimes be difficult. But if you are divorced, the holiday visits and all the other fuss can make your holiday a real pain if you do not plan ahead. Your children are the most important thing, of course, and you should try to make it easy for them. A divorce does not have to ruin the holidays either for you or your children. Relationship expert Maria Sbrochi mentions a couple of tips that may prove useful:
1. If you and your ex will be celebrating the holiday in the same city, you can split up the day. One parent can spend time with the chlidren until afternoon and the other parent gets the kids after that.
2. Older children can celebrate one year with dad and the other with mom. You can make your own traditions or take the family on the road. Come up with a location to celebrate the holiday with your kids.
Interstate enforcement issue highlighted by Florida and Illinois case
This case began with the Illinois divorce of Donald and Lois Weiss.
At the time of the divorce, Donald was required to maintain three policies of life insurance on his life to benefit Lois. Lois sold her rights to one of the life insurance policies back to Donald in 1994, but he was still required to maintain the other two policies.
By 2007, 25 years after the divorce, Donald decided to stop paying on the two insurance policies. Lois took him back to court, and after Donald did not show up to defend himself, the Illinois Court swayed in Lois’s favor for just over $80,000 and awarded the ownership of the policies to her. The court also found Donald in contempt.
As Donald apparently had moved to Florida, Lois domesticated her judgment there. Soon after, the Florida court also entered judgment against Donald for an additional $80,000.
The Florida court also found Donald on contempt of both the Illinois and Florida orders, and ordered him to pay $2,500 per month to purge the contempt. A Writ of Garnishment was also entered against Donald’s monthly income for the full amount of the judgment.
Interstate Child Support Case Results in Overpayment by Father
The Chicago Tribune recently featured an article about a Chicago man who is ordered to pay child support for his twin daughters in Illinois. His children’s mother subsequently moved to a few different states, but the man continued to pay his support and it was sent to the woman in whatever state she happened to be living. When his children’s mother moved to the state of Mississippi several years ago, however, the man began to encounter difficulties. Mississippi reported that the man had fallen behind in his support in 2009, so he paid extra each week toward the deficit. However, Mississippi continued to deduct extra amounts from his paycheck, so he eventually became overpaid.
The problems did not stop there. The state of Illinois began sending the child support payments directly to the ex-girlfriend, bypassing the state of Mississippi altogether. As a result, Mississippi support records incorrectly showed that by 2012, the man owed more than $5,000 in unpaid support, and that state intercepted his federal income tax refund. In reality, the man is owed more than $1,500.00 in overpayments in child support that he has made to the state of Illinois. The man contacted the Problem Solver at the Chicago Tribune after repeatedly seeking help from the state of Illinois and Mississippi to no avail.
Electronic Communications Ease Tensions After Parents Split
Although some couples would prefer to never have contact with one another again following their separation or divorce, those who share children must continue to communicate in some manner, perhaps for many years to come. A recent New York Times article, however, points out that with the advent of technology, formerly hostile and emotional exchanges between former spouses can become relatively neutral and perhaps be avoided altogether. These electronic communications can even allow an almost unworkable joint custody situation to become doable, at least from a distance.
While cell phones allowed for a convenient source of communication, they still require ex-spouses to hear each other’s voices, which can be an automatic source of irritation for some. E-mail and text messages, though, eliminate voices altogether, and allow for a more detached, much less emotional form of communication. Other parents use a mutual Google calendar in order to map out visitation arrangements regarding their children. Whatever the type of electronic communications used, most parents agree that the lack of hostility in their interactions has enhanced their relationship and made it easier for their children.
Elgin Man Sentenced for Domestic Violence
During a verbal argument in 2011, Quinzeric D. Span resorted to violence against his girlfriend. Elgin authorities claimed that Span not only attacked his girlfriend in an Elgin residence near the 400 block of Chicago Street, but also in a car while being driven around Elgin by a third party.
This attack ended when the woman escaped the vehicle while it was stopped at a stop-light. She ran away from her attacker at the intersection of North Grove Avenue and Seneca Street. But she did not escape the beating unscathed. She suffered a broken orbital bone near her eye and a perforated eardrum.
Span was taken into custody to await trial at the Kane County jail. While he was jailed, he successfully communicated with his girlfriend over the phone. Records show that since he was in prison, Span placed over 450 phone calls to the woman, against a court order preventing him from doing so. Authorities claim that this was an attempt to stop her from testifying against him.
The Ease of Proving Infidelity Through Technology
The recent scandal involving ex-CIA official David Petraeus, Tampa socialite Jill Kelley, biographer Paula Broadwell, and the shirtless General John Allen should remind us all that unlike many things in life, technology is infallible, and leaves a trail behind that is not all that difficult to follow. Whether an affair is carried out via email, text messages, Facebook, or other technological means, these electronic communications leave a path that even the least technologically-adept people can discover. In fact, some businesses have made a profit enabling people to easily discover infidelity by creating specialized computer monitoring software and ghost spyware to recreate a spouse’s computer keystrokes, monitor website usage, and record all emails, whether sent or received. As a result, private investigators who stake out allegedly cheating husbands may have become a thing of the past, and even they admit that these types of technological advances have cut into their business margins.
Women can lose health insurance coverage through divorce
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor did a study and found that about 115,000 women lose their health insurance every year due to divorce. Unfortunately, this is not usually remedied quicklly; the overall rates of health insurance coverage for women after a divorce remains low for two or more years.
The lead author of the study is Bridget Lavelle, a University Ph.D. candidate in public policy and sociology; she claims that the loss of health insurance is a huge deal because it most often is concurrent with the loss of a husband. The study analyzes data from across the nation from 1966 through 2007 on women between the ages of 26 to 64. Lavelle conducted the study with U-M sociologist Pamela Smock, and the research was supported by the U-M National Poverty Center.
The study also found:
- About 65,000 divorced women lose all health insurance coverage in the months following divorce yearly. These women often have trouble maintaining private health insurance because they do not qualify as a dependent on their husbands’ policies or cannot pay premiums for other private insurances. These women also do not typically qualify for Medicaid or other public insurance.
Requirements for Fault & No-Fault Divorce in Illinois
Every state has different requirements that a person must meet before a petition can be filed. There are a slew of things to consider as you begin the arduous process in addition to Illinois-specific requirements, including waiting periods and postnuptial agreements. First, though, it’s important to choose what kind of divorce you’ll be filing—fault or no-fault. After this has been determined, and agreed upon by both parties, the next important step is to hire a divorce lawyer who can help you with everything else.
Fault divorce in Illinois can be determined by a number of reasons, including, but not limited to:
- adultery
- impotence
- two-years of drug addiction or habitual drunkenness
- felony conviction
- imprisonment
- infection with an STD
Wife of Cicero Town President Files for Divorce
The life of Elizabeth Dominick, 55, is going through a lot of changes. The wife of Cicero town president, Larry Dominick, resigned from her public office post as the director of the town’s health clinic. At the time, she cited multiple causes for leaving this position. She said that many of the upper echelon of town officials rarely came into work.
In her resignation letter she went to great lengths to include abuses that she received on the job. "I can no longer remain at this capacity due to horrific mental abuse that I have had to endure for the past four years as Director," she states in the letter, dated July 9. Now, she has made another split.
During the week of November 5th, Elizabeth filed for divorce from her husband Larry. Again, she cited mental abuses perpetrated by her husband as the grounds for divorce, with no further details at this time. She has also publicly claimed that her husband’s family has been a major stress on their relationship.
Who gets Custody of a Pet after a Divorce?
During a divorce, many things are changed irrevocably. The house that you have shared with your family might belong to your ex. Assets that you have worked for including your retirement funds may be divided depending on the situation of your spouse. Illinois is an equitable distribution state which does not mean that property is split 50/50. But what happens if the property is not really property?
For people who have pets, they generally treat them like family. It is not crazy to see grown up people talk to their dogs and cats in baby talk. There are also opportunities to spoil pets and kids with treats and toys and hugs and kisses. In a lot of ways they are more similar than dissimilar. The difficult truth about divorce is that pets are normally treated like property, which may create a difficult situation for either spouse.
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