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: The Illinois Family Lawyer

By Peter Olson, Esq.

Thanks Dad, but I'm still going after my ex-husband...that's what happened here: In re Marriage of Hopwood, No. 5-06-0660).

As part of dissolution of marriage judgment, the former husband was required to pay-off a $28k loan of the parties. That loan had been guaranteed by the former wife's father. So ex-husband fails to make payments on the loan and the lender goes after the father. Father pays off the loan in a lump-sum payment...done. Now, several years later the ex-wife now tries to enforce the judgment against the ex-husband for his failure to pay the loan.

Nope...denied for lack of standing. It's like this, typically when you're alleging that someone is not following a court's judgment you are asking a court to find that person in contempt of court. The only punishment for this "contempt" can be to force someone to act...the most common scenario is for a person to be jailed for not paying child support and then there's a bond of say 10% of the support due so the person jailed has to make some partial payment on his back support to get out of jail.

The problem with the ex-wife here? Since her father had paid the loan, there was NO lack of payment by the ex-husband to enforce.

Full post as published by The Illinois Family Lawyer on February 06, 2008 (boomark / email).