ILLINOIS DIVORCE LAW BLOG

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Now that 2010 has arrived people who have been considering filing for divorce are starting to take action. Once the decision is made to file for divorce, an important decision must also be made as to how the divorce will be conducted.

Are you looking for a high cost, high conflict divorce? Well, these kinds of divorces are easy to engineer. They require anger, retribution, and a desire to burn through money without regard to future consequences.

Are you looking for a better, less costly, lower stress collaborative experience? Then consider an initial consultation with my office to discuss my approach to cooperative divorce and collaborative practice.

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Taking Daughter To Church May Violate Court Order Dad Says Half-Jewish Child Should Be Exposed To Christianity, Too by Chicago Tribune Reporter Mike Puccinell at http://bit.ly/8CLYdi

A compelling story about a Father and his child has appeared in Illinois media this week. The story concerns a Christian Dad who is in a high conflict divorce and custody case with his Jewish wife.

“I have been ordered by a judge not to expose my daughter to anything non-Judaism,” Joseph Reyes said. “But I am taking her to hear the teachings of perhaps the most prominent Jewish Rabbi in the history of this great planet of ours. I can’t think of anything more Jewish than that.”

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Some of my clients are aware that the funds provided for initial consultations with my firm go into a nonprofit foundation account (www.karunainstitute.org) for the benefit of a children’s orphanage in Ukraine, among other causes. I am presently coordinating with Life2Orphans.org on an Odessa, Ukraine orphanage project to assist children in the orphanage with HIV.

I saw today, via Twitter, an article that was both inspirational and educational. Aside from helping kids affected by MTCT HIV, it is helpful to understand that with modern care, these kids can be as healthy and “adoptable” as any child, and they deserve a better life than that afforded by the detski dom. Here is the article:

Who Could Possibly Want HIV+ Children?

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I was reading a social networking site that had a thread on Borderline Personality Disorder. It can be very helpful to read the DSM for the diagnostic criteria for BPD, but it can be also quite insightful to read the stories of people affected by a relationship or marriage with someone with BPD. Here are a few examples, below:

“Get out as fast as you can, don’t look back.The only reason to stay with a BPDer is if you are a parent who has a child with the disorder. I was married to someone with BPD. The horrors.

The non-BP has been sucker punched. When you are in a relationship with a BPD you both share a private, intense world of ups and downs. 3 AM screaming matches, stomping, acting out, and in some cases, self harm and violence. This brings you both together in a co dependency. Each time there is a blow up, the couple is drawn closer together in the resolution phase, when the BPDers devaluation episode subsides. This codependency is insidious. I call it being sucker punched.”

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By BRADLEY BROOKS, Associated Press Writer Bradley Brooks, Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO – A New Jersey father has his hopes pinned on Brazil’s chief justice, praying he will regain custody of his son after a five-year court battle in time to spend the holidays with the boy – in the United States.

David Goldman also said he would allow 9-year-old Sean’s Brazilian relatives to visit with his son if he wins the case.

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Michael Doherty of the Children’s Rights Council of Illinois was kind enough to write me this weekend to say that his members have been following Illinois Divorce Law Blog. Here is an excellent article about shared parenting in which the Children’s Rights Council was quoted:

Sharing Custody By: Sarah Rupp http://www.crisp-india.org/articles/147.html

“Do what’s best for the kids.”

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I spoke with one of the committee leaders from the Illinois Legislature’s Family Law Committee today on the progress being made to reform Illinois’ antiquated custody and support statutes.

I have been writing for years on the need for Illinois to join the 21st century, and revise its Dissolution of Marriage Act to reflect statutes that exist in other states that create, for example, a presumption of joint legal and physical custody.

A legal presumption of joint custody acts to establish both parents as presumptively fit to share the parenting of their children. Presently in Illinois, mothers and fathers fight over who will “win” the custody of the child(ren). States that have enacted presumptive joint custody take the fight out of these cases. These states, of course, leave open the possibility that one parent may challenge the fitness of the other to have shared custody, but at the every least, unlike Illinois, these states do not presume that one parent is to be a winner, and the other a loser, in the custody war.

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One of my valued clients, who happens to be an engineer by training and otherwise an interesting and dynamic person, made a comment at court today. She had been watching other cases taking place at the courthouse, and marveled at the amount of controversy over objectively small issues. She stated to me and a colleague that “I simply won’t come to court unless the issue in dispute is over a substantial amount of money.”

Now, my colleague and I have both worked hard to keep court costs for clients as low as possible; both of us practice this cost effective way. We both agreed that it pains us as legal professionals to see people exhaust precious family funds on wrongheaded legal disputes.

What my client was speaking to was this universal concern that litigants should be mindful of the costs of litigation, and that many disputes are amenable to resolution without the costs, uncertainties, and stresses of litigation. This same philosophy of cost saving and collaboration underlies the movement toward collaborative and cooperative divorce.

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I was involved in a child custody matter recently that was becoming difficult to settle, for a number of reasons. I represented the Dad in the case. One of the reasons for the impasse was the wife’s refusal to consider joint custody. I had prepared a detailed Joint Parenting Agreement that was a healthy and proper plan for the parents and the children of the marriage, It was rejected.

Here’s what occurred. Shortly before trial, I took the wife’s deposition. In the deposition, I began to inquire as to her reasons for refusing a joint parenting agreement, pointing out to her examples as to how she and my client had communicated and worked together on recent medical and school issues involving the children.

What developed in the deposition was an appreciation that she had never accurately understood what joint custody in Illinois meant. She told me that she refused to share the time 50/50 with the children with her then-husband, but she offered that she was completely OK with making him a part of every decision in the children’s lives She affirmed that he is a good dad, and should be equally involved in the major decisions.

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amy%20baker.jpg Many professionals that work with divorce and custody cases see cases of Parental Alienation. Parental alienation can be defined as a social dynamic, generally occurring due to divorce, when a child expresses unjustified hatred or unreasonably strong dislike of a ” target=”_ parent, making access by the rejected parent difficult or impossible.

Dr. Amy Baker is a nationally recognized expert in parent child relationships, especially children of divorce, parental alienation syndrome, and emotional abuse of children. Her book, pictured here, provides answers to many critical questions surrounding parental alienation, and is a valuable resource at understanding this highly damaging process.

One definition: The alienation is triggered by an alienating parent. In its worst and most pathological forms, the alienating parent acts to align the children to his or her side and together, with the children, campaign to destroy their relationship with the targeted parent. For the campaign to work, the obsessed alienator enmeshes the children’s personalities and beliefs into their own.

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