# What is the process of divorce and Read my story?



## ddxx (Jan 19, 2012)

So I was here over a year ago debating whether or not my marriage was right for me. 

We live in Illinois, we are young (23 and 20), we have no kids, no real savings (10,000 or so), no debt, a small studio apartment that we rent, and both work relatively equal near minimum wage jobs. 

Our relationship is beneficial in the sense that together we help each other as we both have very limited families (I have none, she has like 1-2 people). Naturally, we are lonely, I am okay with this as I have developed to be anti-social, whereas she is commingly upset at this fact. 
Another benefit for us to stick together is money. Together, we can accumulate more wealth in a faster amount of time. Just a fact of our jobs/income. We don't often spend much money, but together we make double the money. 

So why am I here? Well... because thats the only reasons to stay together.

Love? Well, yeah I _love_ her, but we are complete opposites. You name it: philosophical ideals, religion, education, social, economic, political, every ideal we bash hands. We have no ground to work together on a lasting project because we go in complete opposite directions.

I assume part of this is because we are young, vibrant, rebellious, maybe I should have more patience.... Although, I feel being together forces me to be a shell of my real self. I am 10x less productive when she is around, fortunately, we have jobs and often at different times allowing me to get plenty of my studying/work done. 

Moving forward, I feel like she is a complete anchor on everything I want to do. Soem examples of what I want to do in life are travel the world (even through simply biking/walking/backpacking), move around often (since my job allows moving I want to explore life in other places), continued education for the sake of education, learning Japanese language, opening businesses, developing a network online from blogs, etc. 

Her goals? Well, I've been asking her about them for many months, it goes something like this: "**** it all, just want to sleep/chill here in this one location." As you can see, I am not moving around far in life/my goals with this attitude of depression.

Depression? Yes. She's been diagnosed with depression problems and is now taking various medicines for it (mind you, I am very anti-medicine in this scenerio). She has countless problems with her dentistry (braces, pulling teeth off etc), and also is not considered a citizen in the united states. As you can see, these problems are a major anchor to me.

I value complete freedom, I feel that IF i can go about this life again, that I would *never* marry again. I feel it is a latch that is for pure governmental use and *not* in the name of love. 

To me, it comes down to: Yes, we ought to get a divorce under these circumstanes -OR- No, we should survive together, we are both very young and have minds that often go up and down in our feelings. Stick through it and enjoy life together without being a lone.

Let me pose this question, the reason I am here is for you guys to:
a) comment on my situation
but ultimately b) for information regarding the divorce process. Let us say that we both are okay with divorce. We have extremely little assets and are essentially equal in a lot of legal ways. What would the divorce process look like? Do I have to go to court? Pay lots of money?

I assume if both people are mutually okay with it and have laid out agreements with no standing debt its as simple as 'okay, see you later, good luck. Here's my signature."

Thank you for taking the time to read my post.


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## Acoa (Sep 21, 2012)

If all you care about is process... Illinois Divorce Procedure – Life and times of a divorce case. 

If you care about your wife, get some marital counseling before you decide to D. Be honest in the initial meetings that your intent is to D, but you wanted to see if there was anything worth salvaging. If it's clear you both envision different futures, you will get there very quickly. If there is something worth working on, you will get very concrete steps to work on. Plan on at least 4 sessions over 4 to 8 weeks to figure it out. If you decide to work on things, it may take more. The therapist will never suggest D, they get more money if you keep coming back. But based on your wife's engagement in the process and willingness to change, you might have 2nd thoughts.


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