The main courthouse in Cook County is located in the Daley Center, the square steel and glass building with Picasso's big bird in front of it. It is the block between Randolph, Washington, Dearborn and Clark. Most of our divorce cases are handled in this building although some are handled in the various Municipal Court Houses like Bridgeview, Rolling Meadows, etc. There is also an Expedited Child Support Court downtown at 32 W. Randolph. (Who says that humor doesn’t have a place in the law – notice the use of expedited in relation to any court action.) When you have retained your attorney and come in for your strategy session your lawyer help you decide which courthouse you can and should go to. It is an important but not always critical decision for an experienced attorney since it involves evaluating what judges are sitting in each court house and tactical considerations such as attorney, witness and client availability. It's common sense the closer your side is to the court house the better.

In addition to different Courthouses, Cook County has a unique organizational system within the divorce division.

It probably won't surprise you to learn that Cook County is reputed to have the biggest divorce caseload of any court in the world. Over the years, the powers that be have tried different approaches to dealing with this huge number of divorce cases. Remember a divorce case can continue long after the marriage is ended. Because a judge says something does not mean that everyone obeys – just like laws don't everyone from stealing or cheating on their taxes. Lawyers refer to the parts of a divorce case as: pretrial, trial and post decree. Now let's get more specific.

In Cook County the main portion of the Domestic Relations Division is broken up into teams. Each divorce case at the Daley Center is assigned to one team of judges in the Domestic Relations Division. Each team has a team leader or preliminary judge. This judge hears all matters related to a divorce before the case actually goes to trial for example: temporary support; custody; occupancy of the residence; orders of protection. Each team then has approximately three judges to whom a case might be assigned out for trial. Finally, each team also has a post decree judge who handles any matters related to your divorce after the divorce decree is actually entered. These types of matters would include things like changes in child custody or a change in the amount of child support or maintenance to be paid.

The set up for the court system is really organized the way a case proceeds. Before a judge finally pronounces your marriage over you are in the pretrial phase.

If you and your spouse don't work everything out that has to be decided to end your marriage then you have to go to trial – just like O. J. but with no jury, no cameras, no reporters, no money and most of the time with no good reason to do so. This is called the trial phase and the judge rules on custody (if need be), support, division of property, maintenance (that's alimony). When it is all written down the judges ruling is known as a judgment after she or he signs it and the clerk of the court stamps it. Judgment is entered.

After judgment is entered (a divorce or finding of custody, etc.) you return to court to change things or to enforce the existing judgment. That is called the post decree phase.

Now, as we said before, the court administration has tried different ways of handling the tremendous caseload and currently there's an experiment going on. Some cases, instead of being assigned to a team of judges, are sent to an individual judge who is responsible for the case from beginning to end, all the way through including any post-decree matters that might arise. I should mention that all cases that go to the suburban courthouses are currently assigned to one individual judge who hears everything rather than a team of judges.

Almost independent of the Daley Center, an Expedited Child Support system operates with hearing officers as well as judges, at 32 W. Randolph. A hearing officer is a county employee who sits like a judge and enters orders if the parties agree with the order. The hearings are in alphabet rooms (hearing room A, B, C, etc.) and are less formal than a real court hearing. If you don’t agree with the hearing officers findings then you are entitle to a brand new hearing in front of a judge. If you can live with the hearing officer’s ruling the judge signs it (with almost no review) and it becomes the order of the Court. The Court rooms at 32 West Randolph deal exclusively with parentage (paternity cases). In most child support cases, the custodial parent is provided with a free attorney – an assistant Cook County States Attorney – who represents her or him just for support.

Probably the most important thing to realize is that when a case is in the Domestic Relations court system, it often takes a considerable length of time to have a contested matter resolved. Some matters can take two or three years although that would be unusual. While this might seem like a long time, in general – and there are exceptions that experienced divorce lawyers will tell you about – the judges in this division are pretty good about moving cases along and divorce cases actually end up going on for a much shorter length of time than many other kinds of contested cases.

That's a pretty important word – "contested." What most divorce lawyers mean by a contested case is any case where a judge – remember we don't have juries in divorce – has to decide any issue whether it be: custody, support, maintenance, cutting up real estate or dividing pots and pans is contested. Your case is contested if you and the other side do not voluntarily agree on all issues. Many times I have clients say, "he or she won't fight but they won't agree." Refusing to take the steps to tell the court you and the other side are not in agreement is the same as fighting – it's a contested case – with all the expense and time involved.

Much of the time and cost involved results from the requirements of "due process" and the system being overcrowded. Remember, in divorce cases just like in any other kind of case, the parties and their lawyers have to follow a certain set of rules and procedures. These rules and procedures are put in place to make sure everybody's rights are protected, and following these rules and procedures often involves time. That's "due process". Nothing gets done overnight and although it's always in everybody's best interests to get things concluded quickly we have to follow the law and jump through the hoops.

Many people are under the impression that if your husband or wife does not want to "give" you a divorce, they can keep you married against your will. The reality is that although your husband or wife might be able to make things difficult for you, they cannot really prevent you from getting a divorce if you really want one. In old times, even before we started practicing law, one had to do a lot more to get a divorce. It was like the old west – there had to be a good guy and bad guy to battle it out. Today, we have what is commonly called a "no-fault divorce." This kind of divorce actually relies on the legal grounds of irreconcilable differences. The person filing for the divorce must testify to only two things. One is that in their own mind the marriage is dead and two that he or she has lived separate and apart from their spouse for at least two years. That two year period can be shorten to six months if both the husband and wife agree to do so in writing.

Clients often ask what precisely is meant by "living separate and apart." Does it mean that you have to live in separate buildings, different towns, another state? No! All it really means is that your marital relations have come to an end. You can actually be living in the same residence during the required time period and still use the grounds of irreconcilable differences. However, the key is, to be blunt, that you and your husband or wife have ceased sexual relations during that time period. As you can see, this ground for divorce is very easy to show to the court and is very non- accusatory in nature. No one is blamed for anything. No one is at fault.

There is a movement to return fault to the divorce process. Many people think it is not fair to allow one party to just walk and that the person who breaks the marriage contract should be held liable. But, as of now and what looks to be the near future, Illinois is still a no fault state as far as grounds.

The other commonly used ground for divorce is that of "mental cruelty." This is actually much less ominous and terrible than it sounds. Basically, what you allege is that without provocation on your part, your husband or wife caused serious mental distress with their behavior. We're not talking about one or two instances here. We're talking about repetitive behavior that caused you to suffer things like anxiety, sleeplessness, etc.

Some people have some mixed feelings about this ground. They think it has some sort of horrible stigma attached to it. What you have to keep in mind is that there are literally thousands and thousands of people in Cook County alone whose divorce judgments indicate that they are "guilty of extreme and repeated mental cruelty." Chances are you know somebody who has this said about them in their divorce judgment. It's pretty common in this day and age and it really is not a brand for life.

There are of course other grounds: impotency, bigamy, adultery, desertion, habitual drunkenness, drug addiction, attempting to kill your spouse by poison or other way showing malice, physical cruelty, infection with a communicable venereal disease, conviction of a felony. Not a pretty list.

All grounds besides irreconcilable differences require that one party be guilty and the other party without fault or having provoked the grounds.

It must be stressed that in Illinois a judge can not consider marital misconduct in dividing property or setting support and even in awarding custody unless the conduct actually occurred in such a way as to negatively effect the child. For example cohabitation ("shacking up") by itself, normally can not be used to stop visitation unless the person who wants to stop it can prove there is something in the child's being exposed to the boyfriend or girlfriend that hurts the child.

Practically there's really no point in using one of the more dramatic grounds since it will be a matter of public record long after the divorce is over. Sometimes, however, it is practically an emotional and moral necessity for one party, for whatever reason, to prove the other party to be rotten. You should consider your choice in this area very carefully.