Few areas of law reach as deeply into a person’s daily life as family law. Divorce, parentage, and the questions that follow — where the children live, how a household is supported, how a shared life is divided — are decided in a season of real upheaval. We handle these matters with the discretion they demand and the firmness they sometimes require, and we keep our clients informed and steady at every step.
We guide clients through every stage of a divorce — the petition, the financial disclosures, the temporary relief that holds things in place while the case is pending, and the final judgment that resolves it. Along the way we negotiate and draft the marital settlement agreement and, where there are children, the parenting plan — the documents that translate a settlement into terms a court will enforce and that actually hold up as life moves on. Whether your case settles at the table or is decided by a judge, we make sure the result is clear, complete, and built to last.
When parenting is contested, Illinois decides it by one standard — the best interests of the child — and we build the record to meet it. We handle the allocation of parental responsibilities (the decision-making over school, health, religion, and activities) and the parenting-time schedule, and we are prepared to bring in the evaluations and professionals a difficult case may require. When a parent needs to relocate, or when an arrangement that once worked no longer fits the child’s life, we petition to modify it — always with the child, not the conflict, at the center.
The financial side of a dissolution is its own undertaking. We work to identify and value the marital estate — the home, retirement accounts, businesses, and debts — and to separate what is marital from what is not. We litigate and negotiate the equitable division of property, child support calculated under the statute, and maintenance where it applies, and we prepare the QDROs and transfers that carry the judgment out. The goal is a settlement that is genuinely fair and that does not unravel the first time it is tested.
Some family matters cannot move at the pace of ordinary litigation. Where there is abuse or a credible threat, we move quickly for orders of protection and the emergency relief that keeps a client and their children safe, and we stand with them at every hearing that follows. We also establish and contest parentage, securing the legal recognition on which custody, support, and a child’s future can depend.