It is hardly a game, but after the tears and the anger, and after resolving what will happen to the children, it is very much like the dissolution of a business partnership. Marriage is not only a family in the spiritual sense, but it is also an economic unit which has assets and incomes.

All of them. Numbers have to do with the economic aspects of the marriage. It is not unusual for a spouse who is consulting me to be almost totally unknowledgeable about incomes and assets of the parties. And this is not a man-woman thing. As often as not it is the woman who controls and attends to the finances of the family. Sometimes you ask one of these unknowing persons if they signed a joint income tax return. The answer is yes, but he or she did not read what was signed. There is no excuse for being involved in a marriage in which you do not know the numbers.

The primary financial document is the income tax return. It will tell you the amounts of employment income. The tax return will also show if significant assets, including stock, were sold, and if assets earned income (for example rents, dividends or interest). Most people keep their income tax returns for at least seven years. This is because the limitation on the IRS for a claim of under reporting income is six years and the longest the IRS has to review a non-fraudulent claim is seven years. You should also know where the income tax returns (and other important documents) are kept. If, however, you are contemplating a divorce in the foreseeable future, you should make copies of the last three tax returns and store the copies of the tax returns someplace outside of the house.

Federal law requires employers to make payroll deductions for a retirement plan and to give their employees annual statements showing what is in the pension plan. You should ask your spouse to share these with you so you are knowledgeable.

Most retirement/pension plans have death or surviving spouse benefits. This is an optional provision in the plan. It allows the employee-spouse to opt to take a somewhat smaller amount upon retirement, but in the event the employee-spouse predeceases the non-employee spouse then the retirement plan will continue giving the non-employee spouse benefits, although in a smaller amount than the employee-spouse was receiving. This is an important benefit and especially for a woman because she will statistically outlive her husband. Statistically wives live six to seven years longer than their husbands. If you are the non-employee spouse try to make sure you have surviving spouse benefits. Lawsuits have been brought over pension plans because the employee-spouse, who was formerly married, forgot to cancel the surviving spouse benefits to the former wife and replace the new wife for those benefits.

Yes. Marital property (property acquired during the marriage, excluding gifts or inheritance which are kept in the recipient’s name) usually falls in the range of one spouse not receiving more than 60 percent of the marital property and not less than 40 percent. While this is the usual range, exceptional facts make for exceptional results. The primary factor impacting on the division of marital property is the relative ability of the spouses to acquire assets and income after the divorce. Thus if one spouse has developed a good income producing capacity, while the other spouse did not develop such an ability, the division of assets will be tipped in favor of the economically disadvantaged spouse.

Child support is definitely controlled by the numbers with the child support statute prescribing 20 percent of net income for one child, 28 for two, 32 percent for three etc. There may be exceptions to the statutory formula, but they are rare.

The numbers which apply to maintenance (alimony) are the number of years of the marriage. For marriages of less than 10 years, unless the economically disadvantaged spouse has become disabled, there is no maintenance. For marriages from 10 to 20 years it goes from gray to black, with the award seldom being for longer than three years, and then to be reviewed by the judge and seldom exceeding 20 percent of net income. For long term marriages, over 20 years, the statistical average is about 30 percent of net income, and there is a fair chance of maintenance being permanent, that is, until the death of either party, or the recipient spouse remarrying, or the recipient spouse cohabiting with another person on a resident, continuing conjugal basis. The above numbers for maintenance are not prescribed by statute, but this is what the opinions of the Illinois appellate courts reveal.