Failure To Compromise In An Illinois Divorce

Divorcing people are more reasonable than you would think. 95% of divorces end up settling out-of-court. But, there are divorce litigants who are so inflamed about the divorce that they refuse any and all attempts to settle. For the spouse who is willing to settle their divorce case, the refusal to adopt or consider a reasonable settlement is worse than frustrating…it’s horribly expensive. Without a settlement, every little issue must be proven up to the judge using the formal rules of evidence. This is enormously time consuming and divorce lawyers charge a lot of money for their time. A spouse or former spouse’s refusal to settle can be the be basis for a petition for attorney’s fees. Illinois divorce courts can award attorney’s fees for any reason the court deems reasonable. “The court from time to time, after due notice and hearing, and after considering the financial resources of the parties, may order any party to pay a reasonable amount for his own or the other party’s costs and attorney’s fees.” 750 ILCS 5/508(a) The settlement-minded litigant should remind the court that failure to compromise is a valid reason to award attorney’s fees. “The trial court [may] determine[] that the attorney fees resulted from the parties’ unwillingness to compromise. A party cannot enter into such a battle and expect to come out unscathed. While we recognize the purpose of the statute is to allow a spouse to contest the dissolution on an equal footing so that concerns about incurring large attorney fees will not coerce a litigant into conceding meritorious claims, it is an unreasonable expectation to anticipate that the trial court will automatically require the other party to pay such attorney fees regardless of one’s conduct during the litigation. There are times when the failure to compromise is frivolous. The parties should have been aware of the expenses they were incurring in order to split up the limited pot they were contesting.” In re Marriage of Mantei, 583 NE 2d 1192 – Ill: Appellate Court, 4th Dist. 1991 Excessive attorney fee expenses due to a failure to compromise can even result in a reduction in the total assets awarded to the party failing to compromise. “The use of marital assets to pay fees to one’s attorney for the costs of the divorce constitutes a dissipation of marital assets.” In re Marriage of Berberet, 2012 IL App (4th) 110749 An […]

from Russell D. Knight | Family Lawyer Chicago https://rdklegal.com/failure-to-compromise-in-an-illinois-divorce/