Long-term spousal maintenance, or alimony, is designed to help a spouse who was in a lengthy marriage and is unable to earn an independent living following divorce. An Illinois court will consider a number of factors in deciding when and how much alimony to award. A judge may also subsequently modify an award if there is a change in financial circumstances.

For example, if the spouse receiving maintenance suddenly experiences an increase in his or her income, the court may reduce the ex-spouse's obligations. In this context, “income” can refer to any money received by the spouse. It does not necessarily mean taxable income as defined by the Internal Revenue Service.

Court Reduces Maintenance Due to Family Gifts

Stock options are among the trickier assets to deal with in a divorce. Unlike outright owning stock in a public company, which is easy to value based on market prices, stock options represent a right to purchase shares of a business at some future date. When one spouse has stock options as part of his or her compensation package, the other spouse may not be aware of these options or how they actually work.

Understanding Stock Options

The basic idea behind stock options is relatively simple in theory but can be rather complex in practice. For instance, assume an employer grants an employee the option to purchase 1,000 shares after the employee has worked at the company for five years. Once the option vests, the employee is guaranteed the right to purchase the option shares for a fixed price, regardless of their actual market value. So, if the options were granted at $5 per share, that is how much the employee would pay, even if the stock is now worth $30 per share.

A common concern in divorce cases is that one spouse may be hiding assets from the other. In the past, hiding assets might have involved stashing cash in a safety deposit box the other spouse does not know about or transferring an investment account into the name of another family member. In the digital age, however, there is another method an unscrupulous spouse might employ—using marital assets to purchase Bitcoins.

Hiding Money in Digital Wallets

You may have heard of Bitcoin and similar digital currencies without understanding exactly how they work. Essentially, Bitcoin is an independent financial network that allows individuals to send electronic payments to one another. These payments are expressed in units of “Bitcoins,” which are not physical currency but rather the product of a complex encryption algorithm. This is why Bitcoin is often called a “cryptocurrency.”

Child custody disputes often provoke the most heated battles between parties. When it comes to allocating parental responsibilities, the best interests of the children sometimes take a back seat to the stress and anxiety of the parents. Especially when raised in the midst of an already contentious divorce, the resolution of parental responsibility issues may be delayed by weeks, months, or even years.

All of this can take a toll not only on parents and children but the courts as well. Next door to Illinois in South Bend, Indiana, a local newspaper recently reported on how much time family courts consume dealing with child custody disputes. The report indicated that statewide, Indiana courts take 39 minutes of a judge's time for “the average divorce case without children.” In contrast, if children are involved, the judge will spend nearly four times as long—259 minutes on average—dealing with the parties.

There Are Alternatives to Litigation

Nobody wants to be trapped in a failed marriage. Depending on where you live, however, getting a divorce may not be so easy. Consider a recent story from the United Kingdom where a 66-year-old woman is fighting in an appeals court to obtain a divorce. The woman previously told a family court judge in England that she has been “desperately unhappy in her marriage for many years” and there was “no prospect of reconciliation” with her estranged husband.

Despite that, the judge refused to grant a divorce, dismissing the wife's misery as routine complaints “of the kind to be expected in a marriage.” If the appeals court does not reverse the family judge's decision, the wife will have to live separate from her husband for a period of at least five years before she can finally receive a divorce.

Illinois Is a Pure “No-Fault” State