Posted on June 20, 2019 in Personal Injury

According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), there are more large trucks and buses on the road in the United States than ever before. In 2017, more than 13.2 million large trucks and buses were registered in the country. While this is indicative of the growth of commerce in the country, it has also contributed to the rise in the number of truck accidents. The FMCSA estimated that there were more than 4,400 fatal traffic accidents involving large trucks and approximately 116,000 injury-only accidents with trucks in 2016. Because of the large size of trucks, accidents are often very serious, and other vehicles and their occupants usually sustain the worst injuries. Fortunately, there are certain precautions that can be taken to prevent truck accidents in Illinois:

1. Avoid a Truck’s Blind Spots

A general rule of thumb to remembers is the larger the vehicle, the bigger the blind spots. Large trucks and buses tend to have very large blind spots, which can be dangerous for other drivers. Trucks typically have blind spots on all four sides of the vehicle, with the largest being on the right side and behind the truck. Drivers should try to avoid these blind spots to ensure that they can be seen by truck drivers. However, truck drivers should also be aware of these blind spots and take extra care to remain aware of other vehicles around them.

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 Posted on June 19, 2019 in Immigration

Do you have family members in another country who would like to immigrate to the US? If you are a US citizen and own a business, you should consider the possibility of sponsoring your relatives for an employment-based immigration visa. The wait times can be much shorter for employment-based (EB) visas than for family preference (F) visas, and you can sponsor more distant relatives for an EB visa than you can for an F visa.

Limitations on Family-Based Immigration Visas

There are no annual quotas for immediate relative (IR) visas, but these are only available to a U.S. citizen’s spouse, parent, or unmarried child under age 21. There are quotas, and often substantial waiting lines, for family preference (F) visas, which are available for adult children and siblings. The wait times for family preference visas can be five, 10, or even 15 years, no matter what country your relatives are coming from. And you cannot sponsor a cousin, nephew, or aunt for a family-based immigration visa at all.

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 Posted on June 18, 2019 in Family Law

Sticking to a consistent parenting time schedule may take a lot of effort on your part, but experts agree that having a predictable routine helps children feel more secure and confident. At some point, however, almost every child will put up a fuss when they have to pack up and shift to their other parent’s home. It is natural for a parent to feel conflicted in this situation. On one hand, you hate to do anything that creates undue stress for your child. On the other hand, if you do not comply with your parenting time order, you could be penalized by the court.

So, what should you do if your child strongly objects to going with their other parent when the parenting time schedule calls for it? There are several factors to consider, including the law, the age of the child and the behavior of the co-parent.

The law. When you have a court-approved parenting plan, you must make a child available to the other parent as scheduled and encourage the child to go. If your co-parent believes you are refusing to comply with the plan, they can file a court petition for the enforcement of allocated parenting time (750 ILCS 5/607.5). In addition to being required to give “make-up time” to your co-parent, you could be ordered to participate in counseling at your own expense, pay your co-parent’s legal and other expenses, and/or pay a fine to the court.

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 Posted on June 13, 2019 in Personal Injury

Millions of car accidents are reported to police each year and range in severity from property damage only to fatal accidents. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there were nearly 6.5 million police-reported traffic crashes in 2017. While the majority of them were property-damage-only crashes, there were nearly 2 million crashes involving injuries and more than 34,000 fatal crashes.

One of the most serious injuries you can suffer when you are in a car accident is a brain injury. The brain is arguably the most important organ in your body because it controls all of your bodily functions. Injuring this organ can result in long-term or even permanent impairment to both your physical and mental states. Suffering a brain injury from a car accident may entitle you to financial compensation if the crash was someone else’s fault.

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 Posted on June 12, 2019 in Immigration

Media coverage sometimes denigrates the enforcement actions taken by U.S. immigration authorities, calling them overly aggressive or harmful to families. Yet if agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) did not actively seek to capture and punish those who violate U.S. criminal laws and immigration laws, the U.S. could not maintain the public safety and homeland security that the citizens and lawful residents of the nation expect and deserve. Deportation and removal actions are an unpleasant but necessary reality.

That said, U.S. immigration law is complex and often intimidating. There are many unexpected ways that foreign citizens wishing to live in the U.S. can run afoul of the law.

Young people hoping to advance in life are particularly at risk of being taken lured into fraudulent immigration schemes. The skill of an experienced immigration attorney is often necessary to help holders of student visas to stay out of trouble with U.S. immigration officials.

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 Posted on June 11, 2019 in Family Law

Going through a divorce can be emotionally devastating, to the point that you feel depressed, anxious, and have difficulty concentrating. When your mind is not functioning properly, you may make mistakes that you will later regret. Here are some common divorce mistakes to watch out for.

1. Relying on the wrong advice. Your recently-divorced cousin in Texas and your twice-divorced aunt in Indiana may have all kinds of advice for you. But the divorce laws in those states are different than the laws in Illinois. Listen to your local lawyer when it comes to matters of the law and the court procedures in your county. You may also want to consult a certified public accountant or certified divorce financial analyst to help you with financial projections and tax implications.

2. Keeping the house without understanding all associated costs. You may love your home and neighborhood, or just not want the hassle of moving. But before you agree to keep your marital home, make sure you create a budget that includes all of the home’s expenses, including the mortgage, property taxes, insurance, lawn mowing, snow removal, and other maintenance expenses. Consider the age of all of the appliances and what it will cost you to repair or replace them if they break. Do not keep the home unless you are sure you will be able to afford it.

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 Posted on June 06, 2019 in Personal Injury

Picture this: You are in your car, stopped at a red light. The light turns green, so you hit the gas, but all of a sudden, a car running a red light comes out of nowhere and slams into the side of your vehicle. You put your hazard lights on and get out of your vehicle, trying to assess any damage to you or your car. You talk to the other driver and ask for their insurance information, but the other driver does not have insurance. What do you do in a situation like this?

Uninsured motorist collisions happen more often than you might think. According to the latest data available from the Insurance Information Institute, approximately 13 percent, or one in eight, motorists were uninsured in the United States in 2015. Even if a person has insurance, his or her coverage might not fully cover the costs of the damages sustained in an accident. If you are involved in an accident with an uninsured or underinsured motorist, here are a few tips to follow:

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 Posted on June 05, 2019 in Immigration

Over 700,000 people who illegally entered the U.S. prior to June 2007 and prior to age 16 have been allowed to remain in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA began offering two-year deferrals of removal to these people in 2012 with the option of renewal every two years. Since the program was ended by executive order in 2017 and then resumed by federal court orders in early 2018, many people on DACA status have been in limbo, wondering whether they may lose their DACA status and be deported.

Numerous lawsuits have been filed in various federal district courts seeking to keep the DACA program alive. Two district courts have ordered USCIS to accept DACA renewals, and USCIS has complied with these orders on a nationwide basis. However, a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court may be necessary to determine the ultimate fate of the DACA program. At this time, a Supreme Court ruling is not expected until the first quarter of 2020 at the earliest.

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 Posted on June 04, 2019 in Family Law

When parents with minor children divorce in Illinois, the court asks them to submit a mutually agreed parenting plan that includes an allocation of parenting time and decision-making responsibility. The court will approve that plan as long as it appears to be in the best interests of the children. However, if the parents cannot agree, the court will have to determine the parenting plan. To ensure that the court has enough information to make decisions in the best interests of the children, the court may appoint a guardian ad litem (GAL) to conduct an investigation and report back to the court. A parent may also ask the court to appoint a GAL if they believe that the court needs to hear an independent perspective on certain matters, e.g., a child’s special needs or the fitness of a parent to care for a child.

What Does a Guardian Ad Litem Do in an Illinois Divorce Case?

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 Posted on May 30, 2019 in Family Law

When parents of young children get divorced in Illinois, they must file a parenting plan with the court that includes a parenting time formula or schedule with sufficient detail to enable court enforcement. Thereafter, if either parent wants to change the parenting time schedule, they can do so at any time by either making an informal agreement between themselves or going back to court to formally request a parenting time modification.

The Illinois Supreme Court has published a standard Parenting Plan form designed to ease the process of defining and modifying a parenting time schedule. This form spells out a reasonable process for changing your parenting time schedule.

Modifying Parenting Time by Agreement

For example, suppose you originally agreed to a schedule that designated Halloween as a holiday on which each parent would have the children every other year. However, you would prefer not to treat Halloween as a holiday anymore and instead treat it like a regular day.

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