Chicago High Net Worth & High Asset Divorce Attorney

A high net worth divorce is an Illinois divorce where the marital estate includes substantial or complex assets: a closely held business, executive compensation like stock options and RSUs, multiple properties, investment and retirement accounts, or inheritance. When you’re the spouse who didn’t run the business or manage the money, a high-asset divorce comes with a specific fear: that what you don’t know will cost you what you’re owed. It won’t, not with the right team behind you. Under Illinois law you are entitled to your fair share of the marital estate, and finding it, valuing it, and proving it is our job, not yours.

The Women’s Divorce & Family Law Group by Haid & Teich, LLP was founded in 2014 with one mission: to fight for women and mothers in Illinois divorce and custody. That mission is exactly why the high-asset case is where we do our best work. These divorces are won on resources and information. The side that can afford to find, value, and prove the money controls the outcome. When one spouse holds the business, the accountant, and the cash flow, the other starts at a disadvantage. We erase it.

What if I don’t know what we have?

Then you are like most of the high-asset clients we represent, and it changes nothing about what you’re entitled to. In Illinois, your share of the marital estate is based on what the estate is actually made up of, not on what you happened to know about it while you were married. We start from little or no documentation all the time and rebuild the entire financial picture through formal and informal discovery. Your job is to tell us what you remember and suspect. Our job is to dig, find, and prove what’s real.

How do you find and prove the money?

We come at it three ways at once, because in a serious high-asset case one tool is never enough:

• In-house staff who follow the money. We have people on our team whose job is to trace funds: reading bank and credit-card records, mapping where cash moved, and reconstructing a financial history line by line.
• AI tools that track the money faster. We use specialized, private AI programs, kept confidential to protect your privilege, to comb thousands of pages of records and surface the patterns and inconsistencies a human would take weeks to find.
• Forensic accountants and valuation experts. For the heavy lifting, we bring in independent forensic accountants and valuation experts to value businesses, trace commingled and hidden assets, and expose income that’s been suppressed or deferred (or so often kept in the business). A forensic accountant doesn’t take the other side’s numbers on faith, and neither do we!

That combination is what turns “I don’t really know what we have” into a proven number you can negotiate knowing, or have a court divide.

What am I legally entitled to in an Illinois high-asset divorce?

Illinois is an equitable distribution state (750 ILCS 5/503), which means marital property is divided fairly, and which does not automatically mean splitting the marital estate 50/50. On the contrary, when we have a high-earning spouse on the other side, we often seek more than 50% of the marital estate for our clients. The reason is that under the law, “fair” is decided by the judge based on equity, which doesn’t always mean 50/50. While we try to operate cordially and amicably with our clients’ spouses, make no mistake about the goal: to get you every dollar of the marital estate you are legally entitled to. Not a comfortable settlement that makes you and the case go away, but to fight, if needed, to get you what’s actually yours.

Source: Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act, 750 ILCS 5/503.

Does my standard of living factor into a high net worth divorce?

Yes. Illinois courts weigh the standard of living established during the marriage when they divide property and decide maintenance (750 ILCS 5/503 and 5/504). In a high-net-worth marriage that standard can be significant, and it is evidence, not bragging. If you and your spouse regularly traveled on the company jet, that is part of the lifestyle the law looks at, and your settlement can be built to preserve it, whether that means continued access to the private jet, an equivalent, or the value of it. The life you actually lived can help set the baseline for what you are entitled to going forward.

What if my spouse is hiding assets or income?

We assume they might be, and we look. A spouse who controls a business has both the means and the access to hide value: understating income, delaying bonuses or contracts until after the divorce, moving cash into accounts you’ve never seen, growing an accounts receivable, or running personal spending through the company are all things we see regularly. Fortunately, Illinois requires full financial disclosure, and a spouse caught concealing assets risks sanctions and a division that tilts in your favor. Between our in-house tracing, our AI tools, and our forensic accountants, hidden money has a hard time staying hidden.

My spouse runs everything through the business. Doesn’t that hide his real income?

He may try that, but it won’t work (we’ve seen that movie many times). One of the most common moves we see is a spouse who treats a closely held company as a personal piggy bank, running cars, meals, travel, salaries for friends, sometimes salaries for girlfriends, and household costs through the business so his income on paper looks far smaller than the money he actually lives on. It happens in small family companies and in multi-million-dollar operations alike. Our in-house team flags these personal expenses quickly, and adding them back raises both the income available for support and the true value of the business.

What if the business owns our cars, or even our home?

Then those assets are still on the table. Business owners frequently title personal property in the company’s name: the cars you both drive, a vacation place, sometimes the very home you live in. Putting an asset inside the business does not put it or the value of it out of reach in your divorce. We trace what the entity actually owns and make sure property held in the company’s name is identified, valued, and counted as part of the marital picture.

How is a business valued in the divorce?

A forensic accountant or valuation expert values the business for its fair market value using the income, market, or asset approach, and examines whether goodwill is personal (tied to your spouse individually) or enterprise (belonging to the company and part of the marital estate). Owners routinely understate value heading into a divorce; independent valuation is how that number gets corrected. You don’t need to understand the methods. You need a team that does and that fights over them on your behalf.

I’m only a minority shareholder with no real power. Does that hurt me?

It may actually help you, in our hands. When spouses own a business together and one of them gets frozen out of decisions, distributions, or information, that freeze-out can violate your rights as a shareholder, and those rights are often separate and apart from your rights in the divorce. We have experience identifying these claims and bringing, or threatening, a separate shareholder lawsuit against a controlling spouse. They are frequently surprised by it, and because they will almost always want a release of those corporate claims, it can meaningfully increase the value of your divorce settlement.

What about stock options, RSUs, and deferred compensation?

Equity earned during the marriage can be marital property even if it vests after the divorce, and Illinois courts often use a coverture (time-rule) fraction to divide the marital share of unvested equity. These are easy to overlook if you weren’t the one receiving them, which is exactly why they get missed in settlements written without the right help. We make sure compensation you may not even know exists is identified, valued, and divided.

Can you trace money my spouse spent hiding an affair?

We do it routinely. Plenty of husbands think they are clever paying for gifts, hotels, travel, even a car for someone else through the business or a hidden account, certain their spouse will never see it. Illinois law calls spending marital money for a non-marital purpose (like spending on a girlfriend) “dissipation,” and that value can be charged back against the spouse who did it. Between our in-house tracing and our forensic accountants, those payments are not as hidden as he thinks, and finding them can both establish dissipation and move the settlement in your favor.

Why choose us, between the big high-asset firms?

The well-known high-asset firms in Chicago are built around and built for whoever holds the money. We’re built around the spouse who didn’t, and who is owed her fair share anyway. That focus, paired with in-house tracing, private AI tools, and independent forensic accountants, is the difference between a settlement that sounds fine and one that reflects what the marital estate is actually worth.

WHY CHOOSE US

• We expect the information gap and we close it. Starting with little documentation is the norm in our high-asset cases, not the exception.
• Three ways to find the money. In-house staff who trace funds, private AI tools that track them, and forensic accountants who prove the value.
• Experience beyond the divorce. We can identify separate shareholder claims and dissipation that other firms miss, and use them to increase your settlement.
• Focused on what you’re owed. Reassuring on process, relentless on outcome: the goal is every dollar the law entitles you to.
• Mother’s-rights mission since 2014. Recognized as Super Lawyers (2016–2025) and a Top 10 Best Family Law Firm (AIFLA); featured in O, The Oprah Magazine and ELLE.

ABOUT THE FIRM

The Women’s Divorce & Family Law Group by Haid & Teich, LLP was founded in 2014 on one mission: to fight for women and mothers in Illinois divorce and custody. We were the first firm in the Chicagoland area to focus on mothers’ rights, and that focus still drives the firm today. We serve clients from offices in Chicago, Lake Forest, and Lisle.

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