From breaking the news to co-parenting with your ex-spouse, how you handle various aspects of the divorce process will inevitably have an effect on your children. There are ways you can make the divorce easier on them.
Parenting and Step-Families
4 Ways to Protect Your Child’s Self-Esteem After Divorce
Children will experience various emotions throughout their parents’ divorce, especially when conflict is involved. As a parent, how you handle your divorce and support your child during this transition will affect their self-esteem in the long run.
When an Ex Remarries: How Do I ‘Protect’ My Kids?
When a stepparent enters your child’s life, you will likely feel a mix of emotions – especially if the new partner played a role in your ex-spouse’s infidelity. While your ex’s new marriage may be difficult to deal with, there are things you can do to ensure the transition is a positive experience for your child.
6 Common Mistakes Divorced Parents Make
Going through a divorce is similar to the experience of a family death. Tragedy, sadness, bitterness, and anger ensues in different stages. The stakes are the highest when children are involved. Children are more precious and valuable than any material asset or stack of cash that could ever be fought over – but it’s easy to forget what is in a child’s best interest when parents focus on being self-righteous and getting what they feel is owed to them.
Can a parent give up their rights and responsibilities for their own child?
In Illinois, we only have two vehicles to do that. One is going through an adoption, terminating your parental rights. Second is if you are involved in a juvenile court proceeding, DCSF is involved, and the child winds up being adjudicated and neglected or abused, it is possible then for the parent to give up […]
Can a parenting plan be modified after it has been approved? If so, under what circumstances can it be modified?
If the parties want to do it as an agreed order, they can. If otherwise, the parties are going to have to wait. The issue of decision-making, you have to have it for two years before you can change it – unless there are certain circumstances that will change it. Family law is extremely fact-driven. […]
Does a co-parenting plan need to be approved by a judge?
Absolutely. It’s called an allocation judgment now; we don’t call it co-parenting or anything else. It’s a parental allocation of rights and responsibilities judgment. With 30 years of experience in family law, Laura M. Urbik Kern is a certified mediator and family lawyer who concentrates on dissolution, family and juvenile law, child support, and complex […]
Who could help a divorcing couple create a co-parenting plan?
Mediators, their attorneys… If neither attorney is being in agreement, then you can give the two plans to the judge and the judge can make a decision, based on the hearing, on which plan he’s going to use (or a combination of those plans). With 30 years of experience in family law, Laura M. Urbik […]
Can a divorcing couple create their own co-parenting plan, assuming they can agree on the details?
It’s not a difficult thing to do if you sit down and use a calendar. That’s how most mediators would do it. They would get a calendar and try to figure out, looking at the reality of the situation. Saying 50/50 is very different than enforcing 50/50, because if somebody get stuck at work or […]
How does the court decide who gets primary parenting time if both parents want it?
The ideal situation is that the parents come up with the parenting plan on their own of what they want. In Illinois, a lot of people feel that child support is tied to parenting. In some ways it is, but in some ways it isn’t. We have case law that says the non-primary parent will […]
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