It’s divorce time. January through March are the most popular months to file for divorce in Illinois. And if you want an uncontested divorce in Illinois, your divorce can also be finalized during that time. If you want to get a fresh start, start your divorce and begin your new life. As a flat fee divorce lawyer in Chicago, I can help you move on quickly, and affordably.
Getting divorce quickly
An uncontested divorce, or amicable divorce, can be completed around 1 month from when it started.
That means if you contact us today, you can be divorced about 1 month from now, in most cases.
The require to live apart for 6 months
Perhaps you’ve heard of the 6-month waiting period. You might think that you have to live apart from your spouse for at least 6 months before you get divorced. But let me explain.
First of all, this is a really stupid rule. Illinois has a lot of stupid laws.
I guess the 6-month waiting period is in effect because lawmakers think that people need that long to really think about it. That’s nonsense. I’m sure half of them are divorced, or are going to be divorced, so they should realize how dumb that is and do away with the role together. But they haven’t.
So the rule used to be that people had to live separate and apart for at least 6 months for any type of divorce in Illinois.
What a lot of people didn’t know is that living separate and apart doesn’t mean people have to live in separate households. It just meant that they had to no longer be living as a married couple, whatever that means, even if they still live in the same house at the time of their divorce.
So what people would do is lie. Isn’t it obvious? It’s not like the judge or anyone would investigate their lives to see if they had really been living apart for 6 months. So even if people were living happily as a married couple in January, and they wanted to get divorced in February, they would just lie and say they’ve been living as separate for 6 months. any law that can be thwarted so easily, with such easy lies, is not a good law.
So some lawmakers got smart, and they changed the 6-month rule. now, the 6-month rule applies to a divorce that is litigated. But it does not apply to an uncontested divorce.
So long story short, there is no 6-month waiting period for not contested divorce in Illinois. That’s why you can file an uncontested divorce, and be completely divorced about one month later.
Tax implications of divorce
Tax implications are one reason people wait till the new year to get divorced.
As you may know, there are text benefits to being married. To get those benefits for any given tax year, one must be married the entire tax year. So for example, if you want to file as married and get a tax benefit for 2019, you cannot get divorced anytime in 2019. But you can get divorced January 1st, 2020.
So a lot of people file for divorce in the first part of a new year because they’ve been dying to get divorced the entire previous year, but they just didn’t do so because of tax reasons.
People get sick of their spouse’s s**t
People often get into fights and get sick of their spouse during the holidays. First of all, the holidays often means people are spending more time together. And if you don’t like the person you’re married to, spending more time together isn’t exactly enjoyable.
Also during the holidays, people often have to spend more time with their spouse’s family. If you don’t get along with your spouse, you’re probably having some issues with your spouse’s family too. Who enjoys that stuff anyway?
So a lot of people find the winter holidays to be very traumatic, and unenjoyable. They are so sick of their spouses that they cannot wait to get away.
That’s another reason it’s so common for people to file for divorce during the first part of the new year.