Posted on September 28, 2017 in Estate Planning

You have worked hard your whole life, learning the value of a dollar and a day’s work from a young age. Perhaps you started your own neighborhood lawn care business in your teenage years, worked as a lifeguard at the city pool, or bagged groceries at a local store, setting about to secure your position in the world. Later on, you received a college education and pursued a career, putting in the work, day by day, week by week, month by month. 

That, as you know so very well, is the way most Americans support themselves, provide for their families, and save for the future. After many years of labor, you deserve an enjoyable retirement, as well as the opportunity to contemplate a meaningful distribution of your assets when the time comes. 

In addition to bequeathing financial assets, personal property, and real property to loved ones, you may wish to benefit a favorite charitable institution. Charitable causes are many – secular, religious, healthcare-related, devoted to the stewardship of our planet, working in the interest of socioeconomic equality, and so much more. If one or more charities are of great personal importance to you, the question, then, is how to ensure that they will indeed benefit from the resources you intend for them to receive. The answer to this question is estate planning.

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 Posted on September 25, 2017 in Car Accidents

The event of a fatality on Illinois’ roads and highways is a grim reminder of the frailty of human life and the probabilities yielded by our vastly complex transportation network. Millions of Illinois residents travel by car, truck, bus, elevated trains, Metra, Uber, Lyft, and by foot every day. Tracking this universe of movement is astonishing – if you have ever seen a time-lapse video of city traffic, with the lights of vehicles and other methods of transport zooming through metropolitan areas at blinding speed, you have gotten a glimpse of the sheer scale of modern transportation.

In these millions of vessels traveling through urban, suburban, and rural networks are human beings of all types – young, old, male, female, and all races and ethnicities. With such an intricate web of traffic, accidents are a statistical inevitability. Within this group of outcomes, tragically, are accidents that result in fatalities. We see it every day on the evening news, and even though it happens frequently, it can still seem shocking and unreal. 

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 Posted on September 20, 2017 in Estate Planning

Thinking about your plans for the assets in your estate should be a source of happiness – a reward for the hard work you’ve done and a testament to the family, friends, and other loved ones that fill your life with meaning. Strangely, even counter-intuitively, we all too often shy away from the subject of estate planning instead of embracing it and discovering the sense of security and happiness it can bring.  

Estate planning, when done properly, is something to be excited about. A legally valid will or trust is a means of ensuring that your assets and other resources flow to the individuals and institutions you wish to benefit when the time comes. Such legal instruments, then, are powerfully good things. 

At the same time, importantly, in the absence of a legally valid will or trust, the rules of intestate succession – the law’s “default rules” – will apply when it is time for the assets of your estate to be distributed. In this scenario, your estate may flow to family, relatives, or even the state – a distribution outcome that might be displeasing, to say the least, depending on both the relationships you value and the ones that you do not. As such, it is imperative that you take estate planning seriously and utilize the legal instruments necessary to ensure that the right people and organizations receive everything that you intend for them to receive.

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 Posted on June 09, 2016 in Car Accidents

Automobile accidents can cause a great deal of physical and emotional difficulty, and hit-and-run accidents are particularly devastating. Besides being potentially injured and understandably shaken, victims in such situations may feel a sense of hopelessness or dread. How will they ever repair their vehicle? Who will cover their medical expenses? Should they call the police? Each situation is different, but victims in these cases can take the following steps to protect themselves and obtain the care they need while pursuing compensation for their damages.

At the Scene of the Accident

If you have been injured and are left at the scene of an accident, you may need to call emergency responders to the scene. Should this be necessary, law enforcement is likely to show up to the scene as well, and you will be able to make a report to them once you have been examined by a qualified medical professional. If, on the other hand, you were uninjured, you may call the police to report the accident.

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 Posted on June 09, 2016 in Divorce

Historically, Illinois has used a straightforward calculation to determine the amount of child support that a non-custodial parent must pay to a custodial parent, basing the amount of support payments on a percentage of the paying parent’s income. That all changed in July of 2017, when a change to the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act went into effect. The new law can have a major impact on your Kane County child support case.

A Closer Look at the New Income Shares Model

The previous method of calculating child support obligations was unfortunately not always an effective model. The actual costs of raising a child were not considered, nor was parenting time or the receiving parent’s income. The new model takes all these factors into account. Spousal support, which may be awarded in some divorce cases, is also factored in, whenever applicable.

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