Posted on July 11, 2019 in Family Law

Child support payments are a significant financial burden for some parents and an important source of funds for others. Whether you are a payor or a recipient, you should know when child support payments can and will stop.

Child Support Ends When the Court Order Says It Ends

Your child support order should specify the end point for paying child support. In most cases, child support will end when a child turns 18, the age of majority. However, if the child is still attending high school when they turn 18, child support must generally continue until the child graduates from high school or turns 19, whichever comes first.

Note that the support termination date does not eliminate the obligation to catch up on back-owed child support. Monthly child support payments must continue in the same amount until the delinquency or arrearage is paid in full.

If you have multiple children, and your support order does not specify how the amount will be reduced as each child reaches majority, you will have to go back to court have the amount of monthly child support altered. If your old order was entered before 2016, your new order will use the income shares method of calculating child support.

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 Posted on July 11, 2019 in Personal Injury

Every motorist becomes annoyed from time to time while driving. Maybe a driver forgot to use his or her turn signal, or a driver was not paying attention when the light turned green. Being bothered by other motorists on the road is almost an inevitable part of driving, but in some cases, it can escalate to an entirely different situation. According to a study conducted by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, nearly 80 percent of drivers felt significant anger or aggression behind the wheel at least once. Road rage is an especially dangerous form of reckless driving, because it can lead to car accidents, resulting in injury or even death. It is important to understand the signs of aggression or road rage in yourself and other drivers to help prevent these accidents.

What Is Road Rage?

Road rage is typically defined as any aggressive or dangerous behaviors that occur because of a driver’s uncontrolled anger toward other motorists. Various acts are considered to be examples of road rage, including:

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 Posted on July 10, 2019 in Immigration

A visa is a permit to travel to, enter, and remain in the United States. A person wishing to enter the United States must meet several requirements before being allowed to enter. Under U.S. immigration law, the intended purpose of the applicant’s travel will determine what type of visa is required. There are two main categories of U.S. visas. A Nonimmigrant visa is for temporary visits such as for vacation, business, family, or studying. An Immigrant visa is for people who wish to immigrate to the United States and live here. The process of applying for and receiving an immigration visa can be complex, so it is important to understand which kind applies to your situation.

Nonimmigrant Visa

Nonimmigrant visas need to be obtained for a variety of reasons, but they are always for temporary stays or visits. Many people all over the world like to travel to other countries, and the United States is a popular destination. In other cases, foreigners come here to do business with a U.S-based company, or even to work on a project for a certain period of time.

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 Posted on June 28, 2019 in Personal Injury

In today’s world, it can feel like we always need to keep moving and doing more every day. For some people, driving a little faster than the speed limit to fit everything into a single day seems like a good idea, but what may seem like a minor violation of the law can have deadly consequences. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), speeding killed more than 9,700 people in 2017 and accounted for more than 25 percent of all fatal traffic accidents. Often, speeding may seem like a victimless crime, but speeding accidents can cause serious or fatal injuries.

Why Do People Speed?

There are many reasons why a driver would speed. Most of the time, the reasons for speeding are not malicious, but speeding for any reason can be dangerous. Drivers may speed because they are:

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 Posted on June 26, 2019 in Immigration

If you have a criminal record in any country, your application for immigration to the U.S. may be denied. Immigration officials will evaluate the nature of your crime(s) to determine whether or not you are legally admissible. If you are deemed inadmissible on criminal grounds, you may be able to obtain a waiver of inadmissibility. Your eligibility for a waiver will depend on several factors including the seriousness of the crime and how long ago it occurred.

Definition of Inadmissibility on Criminal Grounds

You will generally be considered inadmissible if you have been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude or if you have multiple criminal convictions. Moral turpitude is broadly defined as acts involving fraud, inherently evil intent, violence against people, and distribution of controlled substances. For example, arson is a crime of moral turpitude because it involves inherently evil intent; trespassing is a crime but not one of moral turpitude.

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 Posted on June 25, 2019 in Family Law

Historically, the legal need to establish paternity or parentage only arose when a child’s mother was not married to the child’s biological father at the time of the child’s birth. Today, questions of parentage can arise in numerous situations, including pregnancies involving:

Female couples, when one is the biological mother of the child.

In vitro fertilization, wherein donated eggs and sperm are combined in a laboratory dish, and one or more embryos are transferred to the uterus of an unmarried woman who will be the child’s mother.

Gestational surrogacy contracts, which oblige the female surrogate to surrender custody of a child upon birth to two other people who are the child’s intended parents.

A wife who uses her husband’s sperm to conceive a child after her husband’s death, an act known as posthumous conception.

The Illinois Parentage Act of 2015 defines the conditions under which a parent-child relationship is established.

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 Posted on June 20, 2019 in Personal Injury

According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), there are more large trucks and buses on the road in the United States than ever before. In 2017, more than 13.2 million large trucks and buses were registered in the country. While this is indicative of the growth of commerce in the country, it has also contributed to the rise in the number of truck accidents. The FMCSA estimated that there were more than 4,400 fatal traffic accidents involving large trucks and approximately 116,000 injury-only accidents with trucks in 2016. Because of the large size of trucks, accidents are often very serious, and other vehicles and their occupants usually sustain the worst injuries. Fortunately, there are certain precautions that can be taken to prevent truck accidents in Illinois:

1. Avoid a Truck’s Blind Spots

A general rule of thumb to remembers is the larger the vehicle, the bigger the blind spots. Large trucks and buses tend to have very large blind spots, which can be dangerous for other drivers. Trucks typically have blind spots on all four sides of the vehicle, with the largest being on the right side and behind the truck. Drivers should try to avoid these blind spots to ensure that they can be seen by truck drivers. However, truck drivers should also be aware of these blind spots and take extra care to remain aware of other vehicles around them.

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 Posted on June 19, 2019 in Immigration

Do you have family members in another country who would like to immigrate to the US? If you are a US citizen and own a business, you should consider the possibility of sponsoring your relatives for an employment-based immigration visa. The wait times can be much shorter for employment-based (EB) visas than for family preference (F) visas, and you can sponsor more distant relatives for an EB visa than you can for an F visa.

Limitations on Family-Based Immigration Visas

There are no annual quotas for immediate relative (IR) visas, but these are only available to a U.S. citizen’s spouse, parent, or unmarried child under age 21. There are quotas, and often substantial waiting lines, for family preference (F) visas, which are available for adult children and siblings. The wait times for family preference visas can be five, 10, or even 15 years, no matter what country your relatives are coming from. And you cannot sponsor a cousin, nephew, or aunt for a family-based immigration visa at all.

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 Posted on June 18, 2019 in Family Law

Sticking to a consistent parenting time schedule may take a lot of effort on your part, but experts agree that having a predictable routine helps children feel more secure and confident. At some point, however, almost every child will put up a fuss when they have to pack up and shift to their other parent’s home. It is natural for a parent to feel conflicted in this situation. On one hand, you hate to do anything that creates undue stress for your child. On the other hand, if you do not comply with your parenting time order, you could be penalized by the court.

So, what should you do if your child strongly objects to going with their other parent when the parenting time schedule calls for it? There are several factors to consider, including the law, the age of the child and the behavior of the co-parent.

The law. When you have a court-approved parenting plan, you must make a child available to the other parent as scheduled and encourage the child to go. If your co-parent believes you are refusing to comply with the plan, they can file a court petition for the enforcement of allocated parenting time (750 ILCS 5/607.5). In addition to being required to give “make-up time” to your co-parent, you could be ordered to participate in counseling at your own expense, pay your co-parent’s legal and other expenses, and/or pay a fine to the court.

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 Posted on June 13, 2019 in Personal Injury

Millions of car accidents are reported to police each year and range in severity from property damage only to fatal accidents. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there were nearly 6.5 million police-reported traffic crashes in 2017. While the majority of them were property-damage-only crashes, there were nearly 2 million crashes involving injuries and more than 34,000 fatal crashes.

One of the most serious injuries you can suffer when you are in a car accident is a brain injury. The brain is arguably the most important organ in your body because it controls all of your bodily functions. Injuring this organ can result in long-term or even permanent impairment to both your physical and mental states. Suffering a brain injury from a car accident may entitle you to financial compensation if the crash was someone else’s fault.

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