Episode 6: Jan 7, 2025 | Erin Wilson Tackles the Legal and Emotional Challenges of Divorce

Show Notes

• 0:32 Episode introduction - Erin Wilson
• 1:57 Will I have to pay all the attorneys' fees for my divorce myself?
• 3:58 What if my ex- is hiding income or assets?
• 6:34 What if my ex wants to travel out of state with our child? What can I do?
• 8:52 How can I stay sane during my divorce?
• 10:32 Wrapping up -- Thank you, Erin!

Transcript

00:00:01 Oh, you're an attorney. I have a friend who...

00:00:03 I've been meaning to update my will, but I just bought a new house...

00:00:06 I want to start a business...

00:00:06 So I was wondering, I think we have...

00:00:08 My brother was fired...

00:00:09 My friend got divorced awhile back. I just don't understand how her ex...

00:00:14 You've been there at a social function, meeting friends of friends. Word gets out that you're an attorney, and suddenly your night is filled with party goers.

00:00:22 Asking you quote UN quote, simple legal questions, the questions are seldom in your area. Some of the stuff you haven't thought about since law school, you're being cornered out of.

00:00:32 Court in the cornered out of court podcast from IICLE, you'll hear from fellow attorneys about the questions they get and the responses they give to escape being cornered. Couples going through a divorce encounter many challenges and uncertainties.

00:00:52 They are concerned about finances, their rights and responsibilities as parents and just enduring the emotional toll that dissolution has on their family. Aaron Wilson focuses exclusively on family law cases through her firm, the Law Office of Erin M Wilson, LLC.

00:01:09 She is accustomed to assisting clients with both the legal issues and the emotional challenges of navigating divorce.

00:01:19 My name is Erin Wilson. I am the owner of the Law Office of Erin M Wilson LLC. We're a family law practice located primarily in Chicago, but handling cases in Cook County and the surrounding area.

00:01:32 Is a focus of. My practice is representing children, so I get appointed as a guardian ad litem child representative, and as a parenting coordinator. I also do mediation and our firm that does a lot of high conflict custody and financial litigation. We also do uncontested cases. We do mediation, we do collaborative.

00:01:52 But we do get a lot of high conflict work both on the financial and the parenting side.

00:01:57 First question, will I have to pay all the attorneys fees for my divorce myself?

00:02:03 Generally speaking, I would say you should plan to pay your own fees. There are certain circumstances where there could be fees shifting both on a pretty predacious or on a post decree basis, or post judgment, and then your post judgment, or if you've never been married to the parentage case, the court is looking at.

00:02:22 Both your inability to pay and the other side's ability to pay. So it's a 2 pronged approach. Inability first and if you've established you have an inability to pay then the ability to pay.

00:02:35 On the other side.

00:02:37 Free decree. There are more opportunities for distribution of payment to your lawyer, but that is typically on your side of the letter, so it's considered what we call a pre distribution of assets without prejudice. Meaning you can go back and look at it again before the case is done.

00:02:57 Such as at a trial and subject to reallocation. Meaning even if there is fees advanced from, say, husband side, that may be wife's responsibility and not a predistribution to her husband for example.

00:03:11 Has.

00:03:14 There are other opportunities to have the other side pay your fees, and that's what we're looking at. Non compliance with orders. So that's under section 508 of the Illinois marriage and dissolution of Marriage Act where you can have fees be required to pay both because someone was found in contempt.

00:03:33 Or because someone engaged in inappropriate litigation that increased your fees on an unnecessary basis. So there are ways to have the other side pay your fees. But as I said at first, I typically tell people plan to pay your own fees and if there's fee shifting or if there's contribution.

00:03:54 And great. Fantastic. But don't count on it.

00:03:58 More on finances here. What if my ex's hiding income or assets?

00:04:04 Money can be found. I know that that's a really scary concept to either not know what's out there, what's part of your marital estate, what your other side has in income or an asset. But it is typically all discoverable. There's formal discovery techniques through the use of notices.

00:04:24 To produce and subpoenas as well as interact.

00:04:28 Stories that can ask for documentation and information. It's really about tracing. Money comes in. There's a paycheck. You look at the paycheck 1st and you see where was it deposited? Was it cashed out? And it's really about following the paper trail. Money comes in, it goes into one bank account.

00:04:49 Then you look at that bank account. Do you see the deposit? Where did the money go? And so and so forth with all of the different accounts?

00:04:57 So it is all traceable when you're looking at, so the deposit perspective and then where that money went. In addition, there's the consideration if someone's in a cash business when you're dealing with a cash business, then you're going to look at a style of living. If you say you make $100,000 a year.

00:05:17 What? You're living a lifestyle of that of five to $600,000 a.

00:05:20 Year the court can make presume.

00:05:23 Options as to what the actual income is when you have an outsourcing of money and you're paying for all these expenses that belie your $100,000 income. So they're always with the cash businesses as well. And even with cash deposits and cash withdrawals, you have to account for that money.

00:05:43 When you can't account for money, that was part of a marital estate, but it's suddenly disappeared. That's what we call dissipation.

00:05:52 Dissipation is money spent not on a marital purpose. After the breakdown of the marriage, the big the big ticket items are vacations, jewelry, dating.

00:06:03 But also just.

00:06:04 Significant withdrawals of cash that you can't account for can also be considered dissipation, and again, that's all.

00:06:12 Not by digging through the bank statements, digging through the credit card statements.

00:06:16 And if that, if infected in dissipation, you're looking at getting about 50% of that back on the balance sheet and that would come from other assets that do exist now. So there's ways to find the money. There's ways to trace the money and there's ways to account for what is gone.

00:06:34 How about this parenting issue? What if my ex wants to travel out of state with our child? What can I do?

00:06:40 So.

00:06:41 If your ex wants to travel, you have to look at it on a few different ways. First of all, is there a case today if there's no case yet pending? Illinois has no jurisdiction or ability to put in place restrictions, so when there's no case pending and someone wants to travel or to move, you have to think about.

00:07:01 How quickly you want to get a petition on file to either stop that from happening, which would be known as an injunction, or to bring the child back if the move has already occurred.

00:07:13 The court will look at how long the child had been gone for if someone moved months ago and you sat on your hand and now you want to bring the child back, that's looked down a lot differently than if someone up and leaves and you run into court the next day or the next week. That would be more considered an emergency situation.

00:07:35 That's when there's nothing on file. If you do have a pending case, you are allowed to travel. There are no restrictions relative to your ability to travel for a vacation. There is the expectation that you give notice, but it's actually not in the statute, so it's not required by the statute.

00:07:54 For temporary relocation.

00:07:57 The other side to it is permanent relocation, and that's moving more than 25 miles outside of your current location. If you live in cook in the collar counties. Otherwise it's a 50 mile radius restriction outside of cook in the collar counties in order to permanently move. Then you would have to seek permission.

00:08:17 Of the Co parent or where they would sign a form allowing the relocation.

00:08:22 Or you would need a court.

00:08:23 Order after you filed for relocation, so you can't just move out of really out of the 25 mile radius restriction and it's not a state issue.

00:08:32 More it's looked at a miles and not state, because if you're living in South Suburbs or Chicago and you move up to Northwest Indiana, that may be not as much of a big deal than if you're moving to southern Illinois. So the change in law addressed that radius restriction versus state by state.

00:08:52 Last.

00:08:52 Actually, on the emotional front, how can I stay sane during my divorce?

00:08:58 Really, my biggest piece of advice is not to let this divorce case consume you. Don't let it be all you eat, sleep, live, breathe. Talk about, think about you have to have some separation which also comes with hiring a trusted attorney that you can rely on to make sure they're representing your interests.

00:09:17 How to say seeing?

00:09:18 Is really, you know, during divorce is the same as with anything else you want to eat, right? You want to exercise, you want to get good sleep.

00:09:26 Also some other important tools is therapy. We are huge advocates for therapy, whether it's direct divorce coaching, which some people like to do, or having an individual therapist. And you may also want to consider letting your attorney speak to your therapist one time just to give some perspective.

00:09:46 Because that can help guide and navigate the process.

00:09:50 Also, don't trust the Internet. Don't just read every article under the Sun and think that these doomsdays are going to happen to you. That again goes to having a good, reliable trust for the attorney and try and minimize how much exposure your children may have to the divorce case because your children can pick up on your stress, you're probably going to get in trouble.

00:10:10 With the courts, if you're talking about the divorce.

00:10:12 Case with your children.

00:10:13 So make sure you're maintaining that that separation, and even if your children are home and you're talking about it, but they're not in the room, they can hear you, they know what's going.

00:10:22 Can so really keep the kids out of it as much as you can and and take care of yourself. And don't let this this consume you.

00:10:32 Thank you, Erin. Erin Wilson is the founder of the Law Office of Erin M Wilson in Chicago. If you have an idea for a topic you would like to hear discussed on the cornered out of court podcast.

00:10:45 We welcome your suggestions by e-mail. Our address is info.thatsinfo@icle.com. IICLE is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit based in Springfield, IL. We produce a wide range of practice guidance for Illinois attorneys and other legal professionals in all areas of the law with the generous contributions of time and expertise.

00:11:06 From volunteer attorneys, judges and other legal professionals, if you are interested in our many authorship and speaking opportunities, please give us a call at 217-787-2080 or sign up for the IICLE volunteer network at iicle.com/volunteer.

00:11:23 Thank you for joining us for another edition of cornered out of court, brought to you by the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education.