Illinois Lawyer Referrals and Legal Guidance
My Spouse Cheated
We are a free resource to find an Illinois attorney or receive guidance on any Illinois legal matter including divorce. We don’t help people find free lawyers, but our staff attorneys will talk to you at no cost, offer an opinion and point you in the right direction. The attorneys we recommend are the same ones that we recommend to clients, family members and friends. If you would like our help please contact us at (312) 346-5320. We are based in Chicago, but help almost everywhere in Illinois.
We are often called by people who want to get a divorce in Illinois because they have discovered that their spouse is cheating on them. We understand that this can be painful, frustrating and invoke incredible anger. The question becomes, how does a cheating spouse impact a divorce?
While infidelity can be a ground for asking for a divorce, the reality is that in most cases it is irrelevant to the proceedings. Unless the cheating is shown to somehow affects the safety or health of a child it most likely will not be a factor in deciding anything in the case.
Our honest statement of the law in Illinois may be frustrating, but it is the truth. In no instance would any judge we know of give you more property, money, etc. because you have a spouse that cheated. If they did it would likely get overturned on appeal. With respect to child custody, while it’s not always healthy to have divorced parents, the cheater doesn’t get blamed for that. Rather, if your spouse is supposed to be baby-sitting your kids, but rather is paying attention to someone else it then becomes relevant. For example, we have seen many cases where during visitation time a mom was leaving her kids with her parents so she could go out on a date. The more that stuff like that happens the more relevant it becomes to the case.
Now whether or not it’s relevant, if a divorce or child custody battle goes to trial and there has been cheating, it will come up. If you have a good family law attorney and your spouse cheated on you they will grill them in a deposition about it. They will also certainly make sure that the judge is aware of it because you never know when that will affect the judge sub-consciously.
The most important lesson from all of this is that a cheating spouse demonstrates the need for a good family law attorney. A good lawyer will take the emotion out of the decision making process and have you focus on your goals whether that is child support, a division of assets, maintenance, keeping your house or whatever is important to you.
We have great confidence in the Illinois family law attorneys that we recommend. There is no attorney that we would recommend to you that we wouldn’t suggest to a family member or a friend. If you would like our help in finding the right attorney for your needs please contact us.
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