Areas of Practice
Peter Sullivan is a time-tested attorney whose legal knowledge is not limited to divorce law. He has the intellectual capacity to look at your case from several points of view, focus on what is important to you, research the issues as thoroughly as needed, limit the time spent in court, and guide you to the resolution you choose, with no time wasted.
Peter Sullivan exercises his abilities in a wide range of law related tasks, including the services listed here.
(312) 725-9724
contact@sullivan.associates
DIVORCE LITIGATION
Financial disclosure and depositions
Financial forensic analyses
Orders of protection
Child Custody and Visitation
Allocation of parental responsibility for health, education and religious upbringing
Parenting time disputes
Relocation disputes
Maintenance (alimony) and child support
Support modification
Support enforcement
Contribution to a child’s college education
Contribution to lawyers’ fees
Trials
Post-judgment motions
In order to obtain a divorce, one of the divorcing parties must file a lawsuit. If the parties agree to the divorce and to the financial terms of the divorce, the lawsuit is considered “uncontested.” If there are children, the court will require, in addition to several other papers, an agreed parenting plan. (Discussed below.) If the divorce is “contested,” the law requires that the parties complete a number of simultaneous procedural sequences (or hurdles) before the trial can begin. These hurdles can include the service of pleadings, financial disclosure between the parties, subpoenas for information upon non-parties, requests of temporary support or temporary parental rights over the children, depositions, hearings, enforcement motions, contempt motions, parenting plan determinations, requests for expert business and real estate valuations, requests for temporary and final attorney’s fees, summary judgment motions, pretrial conferences, pretrial memoranda, settlement conferences, etc. (A responsible attorney will try to keep these contested matters to the bare minimum possible under the circumstances.) The trial, depending on the parties’ diligence in completing those sequences, can start more than one or two years after litigation has begun. The trial itself is routinely interrupted and could take several additional months to conclude.
Before his 25 years’ divorce experience, Attorney Sullivan was a litigator of financial matters, civil and criminal. Given his long and varied experience, he (with some outside AI-assisted tasks, if needed) can plow through these hurdles as quickly as possible.
AGREEMENTS AND MEDIATION
Drafting and negotiation of prenuptial agreements
Drafting and negotiation of agreed temporary orders
Drafting and negotiation of parenting plans
Mediation of custody disputes
Mediation of financial support and asset allocation at time of divorce
Drafting and negotiation of settlement agreements
The two-pronged goal of a good settlement agreement is to resolve present disputes and avoid unnecessary future disputes. This is true of prenuptial agreements and agreed parenting plans as well.
Prenuptial agreements. Generally, in a prenuptial agreement, a couple (each party represented by his or her own attorney) shares information regarding their income and assets and agrees to bind themselves to a detailed financial outcome rather than have a court in the heat of a divorce mandate an unforseen outcome. If a good prenuptial agreement is presented to the court at the time of a divorce, the court will enforce the express terms of the agreement, unless one of the parties was under duress when signing the agreement, or unless its terms are so one-sided as to be unconscionable. For the most part, specific terms for the care and support of children not yet born at the time of the marriage will not be part of a prenuptial agreement. Attorney Sullivan has the drafting experience, procedural knowledge, realistic financial foresight, and sensitivity to the parties' individual circumstances to draft thorough, lasting and intelligible premarital agreements acceptable to both parties.
Settlement agreements are the most common means of fulfilling the requirements of a court-ordered divorce. As with premarital agreements, each party should have their own attorney and fully disclose their finances to the other party. Although the parties can enter into a settlement agreement at any point in a litigation, the sooner the parties agree to financial terms regarding assets and financial support, the sooner the divorce litigation will end. Parties can reach a settlement agreement through negotiations between their lawyers, or through sessions with an independent mediator. To achieve a fair agreement in either situation, there should be safeguards in place such that each party’s point of view is heard and given due consideration without interference by the other.
Attorney Sullivan is trained as a mediator and has the practical and legal know-how necessary to negotiate and draft a reliable, thorough, workable and binding agreement that will satisfy the realistic expectations of the parties.
Agreed Parenting Plans. In a divorce that involves minor children of the marriage, a court cannot approve a settlement agreement in the absence of an agreed parenting plan. A parenting plan, at a minimum, will specify what time each parent spends with each child, where the child goes to school, and how decisions regarding a doctor’s care for the child are made. In order to avoid the dreaded “custody battle” associated with divorce, every good divorce attorney makes a sincere effort to get the parents to agree upon such a plan. Without an agreed parenting plan, the judge in your case (with likely aid from a separate appointed attorney for the children) becomes the de facto decision maker in all child related matters, a situation which is not optimal for you, your children, or the court.
With his training in childhood development and with sensitivity to the needs and capabilities of individual parents, Attorney Sullivan will suggest the optimal terms for you and your children and make every effort to bring the parties to an agreement rather than have the court dictate the limits of your parental authority.
APPEALS
Appeals of domestic relations orders and judgments
Appeals of civil and criminal issues in general.
The litigation of a contested divorce is not necessarily finished when the court hands down a divorce judgment. Inevitably at least one of the parties is disappointed with the outcome. A dissatisfied party has the right to appeal the judgment to a higher court. An appellate court consists of a panel of three judges (or, seven justices if the appeal is to the Illinois Supreme Court) that will look at your case through a different lens than the trial court. Generally, absent a mistake in the law or an egregious misstatement of fact, the appellate court will uphold the trial court, regardless of either party’s sincere dissatisfaction with that decision.
It takes a particular talent to be an effective appellate lawyer. With Attorney Sullivan on your appeal, you will have the benefit of his fluency in appellate jurisprudence, his ability to develop issues to argue on appeal, and his excellent brief writing skills — all qualities that you should require in your appellate attorney.