IICLE Family Law Flash Points - September 2018

1.  Husband not permitted to amend counter-petition for legal separation to include law division claims.  Over two years after wife’s dissolution of marriage petition was set for trial, husband filed a counter-petition for legal separation and a law division action against wife and several other defendants wherein he alleged the defendants schemed against him by divesting him of interests in marital property placed in a QPRT and a GRAT.  Less than 2 months prior to the start of the divorce trial, husband then filed a motion to consolidate the law division complaint into the dissolution proceedings. The trial court denied the motion to consolidate and the next day husband filed a motion in divorce court to stay the proceedings pending the resolution of the law division case or, alternatively, for leave to amend his counter-petition for legal separation to include the claims asserted in the law division case.  The trial court denied the motion for leave to amend and husband appealed.  The Appellate Court affirmed.  Wife would have been prejudiced had husband been permitted to add the law division claims to the dissolution proceedings as it would have delayed the divorce trial for an unknown amount of time.  The Court also noted husband failed to timely amend his pleading when he became aware of the QPRT and GRAT, as discovery in the divorce proceedings had been going on for over two years. In re the Marriage of Reidy, 2018 IL App (1st) 170054.

2.  Appellate Court lacked jurisdiction where the appeal was in the dissolution matter and the denial of motion to consolidate related to progression of a separate law division case.  Husband appealed the trial court’s denial of his motion to consolidate his law division claim against wife and several other defendants into wife’s petition for dissolution of marriage claim which was pending in a separate division in Cook County. Because the denial of the motion to consolidate was a “step in the procedural progression of the law division case, in which the trial court has not yet rendered a final judgment and which was not on appeal,” the Appellate Court dealing with the dissolution case did not have jurisdiction to hear that issue. The Court noted the substance of the motion pertained only to the law division case and did not seek relief with respect to the dissolution proceedings. The trial court was also affirmed on several other issues, including properly crediting wife with $628,807 that she owed husband on a note as part of a buy-out of business interests, which was the amount of attorneys’ fees and costs husband paid in excess of hers.  Additionally, husband waived his right to appeal the trial court’s failure to classify the corpus of a QPRT and GRAT as marital or nonmarital because he had stipulated on the record that the court would not admit any evidence pertaining the underlying value of those trusts at trial.  In re the Marriage of Reidy, 2018 IL App (1st) 170054.