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Stay-at-home parents during a divorce

Tue 30 Apr, 2019 / by / Divorce

A significant number of parents in Illinois leave the workforce to raise their children, especially mothers. Across the country, around one-quarter of all mothers stay at home, while 7 percent of fathers do the same. This choice is widely supported in surveys of American attitudes, especially when stay-at-home mothers are involved. Over half of people in some surveys say a mother could do a better job than anyone else raising the kids at home, even including the children’s father. Even 10 percent of all highly educated moms with a master’s degree choose to stay home from work in order to raise their children.

In some cases, one parent stays home to raise the children because the cost of daycare can be so high. However, in other cases, families simply decide to focus on the benefits that can come from one parent focusing on child-rearing. In addition to being certain that they can trust their child’s caregiver, they can also focus on educational play and other key priorities. Therefore, some parents, especially mothers, with high-powered careers of their own may decide to opt out of the workforce to support the family from home. This can also give the working parent more opportunity to stay late on the job and pursue opportunities for promotion, given that the stay-at-home parent is there to handle parenting.

Of course, this can become more complicated during a divorce. In most cases, both parents decide jointly that having one person stay at home is a family priority. Still, stay-at-home parents may be deeply concerned about their financial future.

Illinois is an equitable distribution state, which means that both spouses’ respective contributions are to be assessed in order to determine a fair property division. A family law attorney can help a divorcing parent work to reach a fair settlement of divorce legal matters.