The Illinois Supreme Court handed down one opinion on Thursday, August 9. The supreme court addressed the issue of whether the lower court erred when it terminated a father’s parental rights on the grounds that he was an unfit person under the Adoption Act. In re N.G., a minor, 2018 IL 121939 By Karen Kies DeGrand, Donohue Brown Mathewson & Smyth LLC  In a 4-3 decision of the Illinois Supreme Court, the majority’s expansive view of the judiciary’s obligation to right a constitutional wrong clashes with the dissent’s adherence to judicial restraint. The supreme court ruled that a circuit court cannot terminate parental rights on the basis of a parent’s felony criminal conviction, where the conviction was based on a statute later deemed unconstitutional on its face.

Asked and Answered  By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC Q. Our firm is a 14-attorney firm in south Florida. I am the senior member of a three-member executive committee. Our firm is in the second generation of partners. The founders retired five years ago. Upon their retirements, we changed our governance from a managing partner to an executive committee model supplemented with an office administrator – some refer to the position as the office manager. Our executive committee model has worked relatively well. The administrator who we hired five years ago is still in place, but we are not satisfied with his performance. We believe that this is in part due to the fact that our expectations have changed. When we hired him, we thought that we needed an office administrator primarily to manage the office staff, billing, and the bookkeeping. So we hired an administrator who had an associate degree in accounting and had worked as an office manager in an eight-attorney firm for two years. He has done a good job managing the staff, billing, and the bookkeeping. However, we have now discovered that we want more – we want executive-level leadership. We want someone who is respected by all the attorneys and can:

The Illinois Supreme Court recently adopted new rules that establish a more stringent process for debt collection companies to file civil cases, allow the court to more easily dismiss cases filed by those companies, and establish a process for purported victims of identity theft to contest liability.  Illinois Supreme Court Rules 280-280.5 go into effect Oct. 1. Rules 280 and 280.1 define applicability and definitions of legal terms for civil action. Rule 280.2 establishes a uniform affidavit that courts will accept to identify basic information in civil complaints filed by debt collection companies.

Join us Sept. 14 in Chicago for an in-depth look at a number of key changes to the family law arena, including the litigation updates that may impact your next client. Family law practitioners, child law attorneys, and civil practice lawyers with all levels of practice experience who attend this seminar will better understand: how to apply the Illinois Rules of Evidence and the Illinois Code of Civil Procedure to your family law litigation case; the judicial perspective on proper pleadings; how to apply equitable remedies to a family law case; the impact of normalizing income as part of the valuation process when determining fair market value; how to calculate appropriate maintenance (and how the new maintenance statute may impact that calculation); and the importance of providing the necessary evidence in a child support hearing.