A divorce in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois can take as little as two weeks and as long as three years. A divorce lawyer in Chicago can help you understand which issues may affect the timeline. It all depends on the circumstances, so let’s examine what can cause the divorce process to take longer. A Divorce With A Full Agreement If you come to your divorce lawyer with a full agreement between both parties, you have an uncontested divorce. Your lawyer can prepare all the final documents: a judgment of dissolution of marriage, an allocation of parental responsibilities, a marital settlement agreement, and a certification and agreement of counsel. Preparing these Illinois divorce documents when there is a full agreement, also known as an uncontested divorce, usually takes at least two weeks. The nature of family law is that there are a lot of emergencies which pre-empt previously scheduled projects. Therefore, I always tell my divorce clients that it will take my staff and me two weeks to prepare the final documents. Once the final documents are prepared, we will read and review them with you. You may have proposed changes which will affect how long the process will take. When you’re ready, you’ll sign the approved final divorce documents, and then we’ll forward them to your spouse. You may hand them directly to your spouse, we may mail them, or we may send them to your spouse’s presumed attorney. You know your spouse and his or her reactions, so we leave the issue of presentment to you. If your spouse has an attorney, however, we always send the final documents to the attorney for review. Upon receiving signed final documents from your spouse, we will file the documents and request a court date to finalize your divorce. A court date is usually granted two weeks from the date of filing the final divorce documents. The court date will depend on when the judge you’ve been assigned to is available for prove-ups. This final court date is called a “prove up”. A prove-up involves reading the final documents (usually summarizing) and confirming with the petitioner (the party who filed) that everything in the documents is correct. The other party may be present but is not required to be present. I always recommend that the other party be present, as the judge may have additional questions or modifications to the final document. A Contested Divorce With Children Contested divorce cases can […]
