Legal and Other Services
    Your Divorce Doesn’t Have to Be a Disaster

Divorce is difficult no matter who you are. It changes your lifestyle, challenges your finances and stresses your family. But it doesn’t have to ruin your life.

Karen Covy is an experienced and compassionate divorce attorney, who is dedicated to helping you get through your divorce with as little conflict, hardship and trauma as possible. Karen Covy focuses on helping people negotiate, not litigate, their divorce. Of course, divorce is full of conflict, and sometimes going to court is unavoidable. If that does happen, Karen Covy is there to fight for you when fighting is what needs to be done. But, as an attorney who is more interested in preserving your assets for your children rather than burning your money in court, Karen Covy can often help you and your spouse work out your issues without having to go all the way through a costly, difficult and emotional trial.

Through mediation, negotiation, and collaborative law, Karen helps her clients achieve the best results they can, all as amicably as possible. During your initial consultation, you will find out about the divorce process, how long it takes and what it is likely to cost. You will be given straight answers to the specific questions about divorce that matter most to you, such as:

• How can I make the divorce as easy as possible for my children?
• What really is a fair settlement?
• Will I have enough money to survive after I’m divorced?

If you have already been through a divorce, but find yourself back in court fighting with your ex over issues involving money or time spent with your kids, Karen Covy can still help. With the right guidance, patience, and work, she can often help you settle your differences with your former spouse without going all the way through yet another trial. More than 90% of all divorce cases settle out of court. Your case can be one of those, no matter what stage of the divorce process you may be in.

Karen Covy handles all kinds of different family law and relationship cases, including both divorce and paternity cases. She can help you resolve your issues of child custody, support, and visitation, as well as to divide your assets and deal with your debts.

She can also write a pre-marital agreement ("pre-nup") if you are planning on getting married but want to protect your assets in the future. By entering into a valid pre-marital agreement with your spouse-to-be, you can negotiate your rights and responsibilities before anything happens. That way, if the relationship ends, or one of you dies, the transition back to single life can be as painless as possible.

Dealing with divorce, paternity and relationship conflicts is never easy. Most of the time, you can do it outside of the court system. But, sometimes you can’t. Sometimes, in order to settle, you first have to fight. No matter what happens in your divorce or family law case, you need to have someone with you who is on your side. You need an advocate, someone who will work with you to achieve your goals, rather than against you, increasing your conflict. In the end, your peace of mind, your family and your long-term happiness are what matters most.

Karen Covy can help you through the process so that your divorce does not become a disaster.

If you live in the Chicago area and need a family law attorney or mediator who can help you get through your divorce sanely, you can email Karen Covy at: karen@KarenCovy.com, or call (312) 236-1670 for an appointment.

Definitions for the Underlined Terms

Mediation is a way to resolve disputes in which a trained mediator sits down with the two people involved in a divorce to try to help them work out a deal. A mediator is not a judge. He or she can’t force either party to do anything. The mediator is an impartial third party. He or she does not represent either per-son, and cannot be the lawyer for either party in the divorce. What the mediator does is use proven techniques to help two people talk to each other and work out an acceptable deal themselves.

Negotiation is like mediation, except that it doesn’t use a third-party mediator. Negotiation is a discussion between two parties in which each person talks about what he or she wants and needs, each listens to what the other person wants and needs, and the two then work out a compromise deal that gives each of them as much of what they want and need as possible. Sometimes people can negotiate an agreement by them-selves without a lawyer or mediator present. At other times, if people can not talk with each other directly, their lawyers can nego-tiate a deal for them. Or the people and their lawyers can all get together at the same time to negotiate a deal.

Collaborative Law is a fairly new way to resolve divorce and family disputes. It is simply a colla-boration between both of the parties in a divorce case, their attorneys, and what-ever other pro-fessionals they may need to settle their differences without going to court. In order to participate in the collaborative law process, both parties and both of their attorneys must agree not to fight in court. If either party does go to court, the collaborative law process ends, both of the attorneys must resign from the case, and each party has to find a new lawyer and start all over again.