Hi. Have had a ton of terrific help on the other pages. MB is a wonderful resource. Now thinking I may need MB help in other ways... after 3+months of her A, today WW started contatacting divorce attorneys. I'm no longer so hopeful that things will work out. Think I need to start getting educated about divorce. Can someone please point to threads or resources that give helpful background info?

I understand state law and circumstances are important; here's some background. We live in Illinois. 2 boys, 10 and 12. I've been unemployed 8 months. Wife returned to work 13 months ago after 8 years off to raise kids. Her income is more than a third of what mine was. We're a nice family, and both spouses are pretty clean, e.g. no history of physical abuse - never hit her and never will. Also no alcohol abuse, smoking etc. I did more porn surfing than I should have, but stopped 3 months ago.

Probably there's a lot more that's relevant, but I don't know what is important and what's not. Any questions?

I understand in our state divorce is more or less automatic, and adultery makes little difference in either divorce or custody. And that child support is determined by formula that has nothing to do with adultery. Can all of that be true?

Does adultery make any difference in any part of the legal proceedings at all in our state?

Does my current unemployed situation affect the likelihood of getting custody or getting a satisfactory outcome in any other respect?

What other 10 million things do I need to know?

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

Also, I've heard there is an advantage to being 1st to file. Is that true? Also that I should continue to live in the house with WW; moving out would be a huge mistake. Not sure why, that's just what I heard somewhere. Can anyone offer any help with that?

I know an attorney could clear a lot of this up right away. Will probably schedule initial meeting soon, but in the meantime would be grateful for any help. Thanks!

Yes, I just completed a divorce in Illinois, St Clair County to be specific.

I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.

Your divorce will probably settle out of court. It is pretty much automatic. The only thing you can do to slow it down is not sign the waiver of a two year waiting period of being seperate.

She can file as "irreconcilable differences" and then you start negotiating how you want to split up the stuff and the parenting time.
All of it is true. At least in my county, for a guy to get custody, you need cubic dollars. Of course, what would be good would be to set precident. So if she wants to take the children out of the marital home, say no, get a court order if you can. If she can establish the children away from you, then the judge will likely want that to continue. So I'd start with, "you are free to go, I'll take care of the children and the home." Since you are unemployed, you certainly have the time to take care of the kids.

Nope, they don't care, it doesn't matter for child support, nor does it matter for spousal maintenance. Child support is generally figured as a percentage of after tax income. I have one child, and pay 20% of my after tax income in child suppport to my ex-wife. It is taken from my pay before I ever see it.

I really don't know what they will do in your case of being unemployed, look at your work history, etc.

Alimony, aka spousal support is not common in marriages of less than 10 years, or where both parties can support themselves. Perhaps you can ask for alimony from her, as well as child support since you are unemployed at the moment.

I think where kids are right now and with whom is the primary factor determining custody.

Try mediation, sending offer through lawyers is rather expensive. Of course my ex-wife refused and almost her entire cash settlement is paying her legal fees.

T

Thanks ConfusedEx, that helps a lot. We've just agreed that if we do divorce we'll have it mediated. I wonder how realistic that is. How often does mediated divorce really come to pass?

Seems to me that either party could easily get upset in the middle of mediation and switch to a confrontational 2-opposing-lawer approach.

Seems to me the advantages of mediation are (i) save a lot of $, maybe half of what the 2-lawyer approach would cost, and (ii) we have a chance of staying more or less on friendly terms.

Thx again for any thoughts and ideas.

I agree with most of the other poster's advice. In my state adultery does figure into alimony and settlement.

If your state favors the mother - what you might try to do is to sit down with your wife and work out an agreement together. Your children are old enough to impact custody somewhat with their opinion - who do they want to live with? Can you and your wife work together amicably for a shared arrangement? (week on week off?) You should educate yourself as to what your state statutes are and hang out at some divorce and custody boards to get more advice on paperwork and what and how to ask for what you want. You didn't indicate here what you hoped to get.

In general some will tell you to ask for the moon and settle for half. My ex was like this. I spent a lot of time determining what would be fair and then I would offer him that along with hard evidence that he would do no better or would actually do worse if we took it to court. I was honest and I'm sure when he checked with his lawyer, the lawyer told him to take my offer.

I spent $9000 on lawyer fees - he spent maybe $3000. Mostly because he made it difficult. He did however agree to almost everything out of court because the two times we were in court he didn't get any of his unreasonable requests. The master told him that our children were too young to decide where to live, and the judge told him to get out in the hall and work out an agreement or she would order us to undergo very expensive evaluations.

Would you and your wife be able to sit down and discuss in a calm rational way what would be good for your boys? If so then do this. Make a list of things in the household and decide between yourselves what you or your wife want. Have a realtor come out and appraise the house for it's appreciated value then decide if either of you can afford it now and start a refinance or put it up for sale. Plan to divide things equally and don't squabble over uninportant things.

Remember that divorce is three part: the marriage, the property, and the children. You can settle each one individually - don't get caught up in one or the other if negotiations can be worked out for something but not another. If things get heated, agree to try again another time and do that.

V.