How to Get Financial Support During a Divorce
One aspect of filing for divorce in Illinois when you have children that can be frightening is ensuring that you can get adequate financial support during the divorce for you and for your children. A divorce will cost money and take time and once there is a court case and attorneys involved it may become much more complicated in figuring out how to pay the bills and care for your children. As an initial point, unless you can get a court to grant you a fee waiver you are going to need to pay a filing fee to initiate a divorce, which typically involves $300-$400 in fees. It is also a good idea to be represented by legal counsel in a divorce and an attorney will likely want some sort of retainer paid in advance of the filing of the initial divorce petition. If your Spouse makes significantly more than you, you may be able to get the court to have your Spouse contribute to your attorneys’ fees, but it is not guaranteed and it will take time in the court process to get that issue adjudicated and the fees to be awarded. An attorney may be willing to limit the initial retainer if a fee contribution petition will likely have merit or you will be receiving significant assets at the end of the case. Understand though that if you do get an attorney to start without a substantial retainer, the fees will likely need to be paid from the final allocation of the assets that you receive at the end of the process.
Once the divorce process is started, you can ask for what is called temporary child support. That is support that can be awarded while the divorce process is ongoing. Temporary support can usually be dealt with in a summary fashion and can be obtained fairly quickly. There is a some lag time to consider because a petition for temporary support does need to be drafted and filed and a hearing has to be scheduled before the court. At the end of the case, the temporary support will end and a permanent child support amount will be entered that may or may not be the same as the temporary support amount. Another thing to consider is that aside from child support, the parties are required to contribute to what are called Additional Child Expenses. These expenses typically involve child education expenses, out-of-pocket medical expenses, and expenses for extra-curricular activities. Once a case is started, you can ask the court on a temporary basis to also order your Spouse to contribute to such expenses.
Another consideration is how you will pay the mortgage and other bills during the divorce. Once the divorce process is started, you can also ask your attorney to negotiate with the other side how the monthly bills will be addressed and see if an agreement can be reached on who will pay what bills. If your Spouse has unilateral access to the family finances and refuses to help with the bills, you can also petition the court to order your Spouse to contribute to the bills while the case is ongoing. If you are eligible to receive maintenance (used to be called alimony) you can also petition the court to give you temporary maintenance. This temporary maintenance, however, may be credited toward the overall term of maintenance and reduce the length of payment of permanent maintenance.