Divorce in Illinois: what to expect
What a divorce in Illinois actually involves: how property is divided, how long you must have lived there, what you have to prove, how long it takes, and what the court is deciding about the children. Illinois is an equitable distribution state. The court divides marital property fairly, which is not the same as equally, and the difference is where the argument happens.
See a different stateIllinois
Every line below is taken from the statute or the court, and the citation is next to it so you can check us. It is still not advice about your case. The same statute produces very different outcomes on different facts, and the parts that decide your outcome — the length of the marriage, who earned what, whose name is on what — are not on this page because we do not know them. Use this to know what questions to ask, not to predict an answer.
Illinois at a glance
Every row is cited. Where a row says we could not confirm it, that is exactly what it means — we went looking and would not guess.
| Question | The answer in this state | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Property division | equitable distribution | 750 ILCS 5/503 |
| How it works in practice | Illinois is not a community property state; the court classifies property as marital or non-marital and divides marital property equitably (fairly, not necessarily equally), making specific factual findings on classification and value. | 750 ILCS 5/503 |
| Residency requirement | 90 days of Illinois residency is required, either completed before filing or before the court’s finding on the grounds for dissolution. | 750 ILCS 5/401 |
| Waiting period | No mandatory waiting period after filing. The only time-based rule is evidentiary: if the spouses have lived separate and apart for a continuous period of at least 6 months immediately before the judgment is entered, there is an irrebuttable presumption that irreconcilable differences exist; a shorter (or no) separation is permitted if the court otherwise finds irreconcilable differences. | 750 ILCS 5/401(a), (a-5) |
| The no-fault ground | Irreconcilable differences have caused the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, and efforts at reconciliation have failed or would be impracticable and not in the family’s best interests. Illinois no longer recognizes any other grounds. | 750 ILCS 5/401 |
| Filing fee | Set locally by the clerk, not statewide. Check your county | — |
| Alimony | Called ‘maintenance’. The court first decides whether maintenance is appropriate after weighing the § 504(a) factors (each party’s income, property and needs, present and future earning capacity, impairment from domestic duties, time needed for education or training, parental responsibilities, standard of living, duration of the marriage, age, health and occupation, tax consequences, contributions to the other’s career, any valid agreement, and other equitable factors). If maintenance is appropriate and the parties’ combined gross annual income is under $500,000 (with no prior support obligations), statutory guidelines apply: the amount is 33 1/3% of the payor’s net annual income minus 25% of the payee’s net annual income, capped so the payee does not receive more than 40% of the combined net income; the duration is the length of the marriage multiplied by a factor from .20 (under 5 years) rising in steps to .80 (19 years), and for a marriage of 20 or more years the court orders maintenance for a period equal to the length of the marriage or for an indefinite term. | 750 ILCS 5/504(a), (b-1)(1)(A)-(B) |
| Custody standard | Illinois allocates ‘parental responsibilities’ — decision-making responsibilities (750 ILCS 5/602.5) and parenting time (750 ILCS 5/602.7) — according to the child’s best interests, applying the statutory factors in each section. | 750 ILCS 5/602.5(a); 750 ILCS 5/602.7(a)-(b) |
| Any parenting-time presumption | No presumption of equal parenting time; the statute is silent on any 50/50 default, and § 602.5(a) states only that nothing in the Act requires that each parent be allocated decision-making responsibilities. The one express presumption is in § 602.7(b): both parents are presumed fit, and the court may not restrict parenting time unless it finds by a preponderance of the evidence that a parent’s exercise of parenting time would seriously endanger the child’s physical, mental, moral or emotional health. | 750 ILCS 5/602.5(a); 750 ILCS 5/602.7(a)-(b) |
Grounds: what you have to say happened
The no-fault ground in Illinois is: Irreconcilable differences have caused the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, and efforts at reconciliation have failed or would be impracticable and not in the family’s best interests. Illinois no longer recognizes any other grounds.. 750 ILCS 5/401
There is effectively no fault-based route here. Which means the affair, the drinking, or whose fault it was is generally not the question the court is deciding, however much it matters to you.
What is unusual about Illinois
The things that surprise people who assumed their state works like the one they read about.
- Illinois eliminated the terms ‘custody’ and ‘visitation’ from its statutes in 2016 in favor of ‘allocation of parental responsibilities’ and ‘parenting time’ — people researching under the old terminology may not find it in the current code.
- Illinois eliminated all fault-based grounds effective 2016; irreconcilable differences is now the sole ground for divorce.
How long you were married. Almost every alimony statute in the country turns on it, and most have unwritten thresholds judges apply. Whose name is on what. It matters far less than people expect in a community property state and far more than people expect for a house bought before the marriage. Whether either of you brought money in. Separate property stays separate until it is mixed with marital money, and then the argument is about how thoroughly. The questions that decide it are here.
Compiled 31 August 2026 from Illinois statutes and court sources, each linked in the table. Re-read line by line against the statutes on 3 September 2026; every row above was confirmed or corrected at the official source that day. Statutes change, and several states have changed theirs recently. Tell us if we have one wrong.
Keep reading
- The Illinois divorce kit — forms, fees and deadlines
- Legal help in Illinois you can afford
- Who gets what — the questions that decide it
- What a Illinois divorce costs
- What two households cost
- What people wish they had known