‘BREAKING DAWN - PART 2’
★★★
PLUS: Local fans look back on the movie series & Kristen Stewart on what’s next for her THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2012
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After the divorce
District 158, union reach agreement after impasse By STEPHEN Di BENEDETTO sdibenedetto@shawmedia.com
Photo Illustration by H. Rick Bamman – hbamman@shawmedia.com
When the wealth you have built for years is not what it was because of divorce, what can you do when it is so late in the game?
Couples need to think long term to keep financial lives afloat By EMILY K. COLEMAN ecoleman@shawmedia.com Along the wall of Elizabeth Felt Wakeman’s office are boxes and boxes filled with paperwork. The divorce case that filled all those boxes – plus another nine file cabinets’ worth – isn’t typical, said Wakeman, a family law attorney with Zukowski, Rogers, Flood & McArdle in Crystal Lake. “There is nothing particularly typical in a divorce because there is such a wide range of the assets and liabilities that people have and
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also the range of emotions,” she said. “And the emotions really do drive the finances, unfortunately.” The people who walk into her office – and into the offices of the other experts the Northwest Herald spoke with – often are unprepared for the stark financial picture that can be the result of one household becoming two. And with the housing market limping along and the unemployment number still high, the situation has gotten only worse for a lot of couples. For a lot of middle-class
families, their largest asset was their home, said Michael Stetler, a family law attorney with Gitlin, Busche & Stetler in Woodstock. When home values plummeted, it made the balance sheet attorneys use to divide assets look pretty bleak. “Sometimes it made cases easier and less contentious,” Stetler said. “Other times, people would fight harder for the little that was there.” Some are finding they just can’t afford divorce, and so they’re staying together, at least temporarily, said Joe Genarella, a certified divorce financial analyst with
Dorion-Gray Retirement Planning. It’s a good solution if the couple still are on good speaking terms, he said, although he recommends they set out guidelines. There are ways around the housing issue, although none of them are ideal, said Stetler, who has a background in accounting. For one, the couple can still get divorced but put off selling the home until the market improves, letting one partner remain in the house.
See DIVORCE, page A6
They have to not only literally but metaphorically divorce themselves from the previous relationship that they were in. They have to start anew, which is a difficult situation.” Gregg Vann, a financial adviser with James T. Borello & Co. in East Dundee
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D-46 GIVES LEADER 3 MORE YEARS District 46 school board members approved a new performance-based contract with the district’s superintendent. Lynette Zimmer’s three-year agreement was approved the same day the board inked a deal with its teachers union. Zimmer will receive a 1 percent raise. For more, see page B1.
Bill Kurtis
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HUNTLEY – The attention on monthslong negotiations between District 158 and its teacher union now shifts to Monday, as 600-plus teachers prepare to vote on a tentative contract agreement. The agreement was reached between union leaders and the board just after midnight Wednesday. The two sides negotiated for almost five hours during an impromptu bargaining session, hours after the union declared a formal impasse in contract talks that began in the summer. The agreement, both sides said, more effectively
addresses teacher compensation issues, even though neither side disclosed any details – something they have refrained from doing since a third-party mediator was requested in August. “We are very pleased that the board and HEA came together to put together a contract,” Huntley Education Association co-President Julie McLaughlin said. “Both parties are proud to have achieved their mutual goals.” The 600 or more teachers belonging to the Huntley Education Association already have rejected a tentative deal in early September.
See DEAL, page A6
Group: Ill. pension system is ‘unfixable’ By JOHN O’CONNOR The Associated Press SPRINGFIELD – Illinois’ public-employee pensions system is so far in debt that it is “unfixable,” an influential business group said Wednesday. The Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago told its members in a memo that even current retirees’ benefits must be cut and other drastic action taken to prevent pensionprogram bankruptcy, the memo said. “The pension crisis has grown so severe that it is now unfixable,” former state
Attorney General Tyrone Fahner, the committee’s president, wrote. “We do not make that statement lightly. It is an honest statement that no one – not our legislators, nor our governor, nor labor leaders – is willing to say publicly.” The memo said workers putting money into the retirement accounts will never see the payback they were promised. “It’s not melodrama, it’s fraud,” Fahner said in an interview with The Associated Press. “They’re paying under false pretenses.”
See PENSION, page A6