Six Tips for an Affordable Divorce with Children!

Divorce with children can be a long drawn out process and very expensive but here our 6 tips for an affordable divorce with children.

1. Figure out a day to day parenting plan in advance. Decide in advance what days the kids are with Mom and what days the kids are with Dad. Perhaps they will be with Mom from Monday until Friday and then with Dad two to three weekends a month. Perhaps, Mom and Dad can alternate weeks expecially if they both live in the same school district or very close by.

2. Discuss in advance what holidays are important to each of you such as Christmas, Hanukah, Thanksgiving and even Halloween. You need to talk about whether the two of you will alternate spending those special days with the kids every other year or split the days in two.

3. Decide in advance how you will make the important decisions in the kids’ lives. The four areas your parenting agreement must address in Illinois are Education, Non-Emergency Medical Matters, Religion, and Extra-Curricular Activities. Most parents now agree to joint decision making in those areas but every family is different. One of you may be an educator and that person wants final say in areas involving education or one of you is in the medical field and wants to make sole decisions in that area.

4. Once you decide the parenting schedule and how you will make decisions, you have the outline of the “Allocation Judgment and Parenting Plan”. You can bring that outline to your attorney(s). 

5. The final step is figuring out finances and how to divide property.

6. You will need to discuss whether one of you pays child support or if you make about the same amount of money whether you will simply split expenses. At that point, in my opinion, you will need professional help in determining if there are going to be child support payments and how much.

These are the six major steps obtaining Divorce with Children. How you divide the hourse, condo and retirement accounts are another matter. At Gabrielle Davis, PC, we are committed to making the process as streamlined as possible.