Evanston Family Law Firms

If you are facing a divorce, need a post-divorce modification, have a child custody concern outside of marriage and divorce, are contemplating a marital contract, or have a paternity issue, it’s a matter of family law. If you find yourself in any one of these challenging situations, you shouldn’t wait to reach out to a well-established Evanston family law firm.

Issues Related to Divorce

While many people correlate family law directly with divorce, there’s a lot more to this broad branch of the law. Consider the following divorce-related concerns:

The equitable division of marital property, which is a universal term of divorce
Parental responsibilities and parenting time – also called legal and physical custody, respectively – are primary concerns in marriages involving shared children, in post-decree modifications, and in parental relationships between partners who were never married.
Child support, which splits financial support for the children between both parents and can be addressed in terms of divorce, modifications, and children born outside of marriage.
Alimony, which addresses the matter of financial assistance for an ex who is left without the ability to support themself financially and can also arise in terms of post-divorce modifications

Prenuptial and Postnuptial Agreements

While they didn’t have the best reputation in the past, prenuptial agreements, which are entered into prior to marriage, and postnuptial agreements, which are created during the marriage, are gaining in popularity due to their ability to streamline the divorce process and lay bare what a divorce would likely mean for the couple in question. These legal contracts generally set the parameters for concerns such as the following in the event that the marriage does end in divorce:

How separate assets will be treated
How marital property will be divided
The issue of alimony
The inheritance rights of any children who are not shared

Paternity

Paternity determines who a child’s legal father is when they are born outside of marriage. When a couple is married, paternity is presumed in the State of Illinois, but when this isn’t the case, paternity must be established in one of the following ways:

By both parents filing a signed document with the court
By either parent requesting that the court establish paternity via DNA testing
By the court requiring the establishment of paternity via DNA testing

The matter of establishing a child’s father has many benefits, including:

Financial assistance for mother and child
A parental relationship between father and child
Legal rights for the child, such as inheritance rights
Benefits for the child, such as employment-based health and life insurance
Parenting support for the mother

It’s Time to Consult with an Evanston Family Law Firm

If you are facing a family law concern, the savvy family law attorneys at Hammer Serna & Quinn in Evanston are well-prepared and well-positioned to help. Your rights matter and your case are important, so please don’t delay reaching out and contacting us for more information about what we can do to help you today.

Evanston Family Law Firms