ILLINOIS DIVORCE LAW BLOG

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I talked recently with one of the clerks of the court in the west suburbs about the number of new divorce filings in Kane and DuPage Counties. I was told that the number of filings is slightly behind 2009 numbers, but that the number of people filing and representing themselves, without an attorney, has risen fourfold.

Now, I’m a believer and proponent of encouraging people to handle matters that they can handle themselves. I recently advised someone who called me that her DuPage child support case could be handled, pro se, at the pro se night court that DuPage has instituted, as a means of helping people get simple adjustments to child support without having to hire a lawyer.

I also feel that divorce and custody cases are often challenging for the litigants, emotionally charged, and complex. The issues presented in these cases really need an experienced attorney, much like the old saw about doing one’s own dentistry.

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Through the years, I have been involved with divorce and custody cases that involved elements of unhealthy narcissism. My friend and colleague Billy Eddy’s book, Splitting speaks in detail of the difficulties dealing with litigants with NPD and BPD. I am often consulted on cases involving BPD and NPD in custody cases.

Psychologists are fascinated by narcissists, both why they are attractive to healthy partners despite on some level recognizing their dysfunction, and because they embody so many paradoxes. Extreme narcissists inevitably reveal their true nature to those around them and are eventually rejected. So why don’t healthy people (and the narcissists) learn?

The charming narcissist:

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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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