Illinois Family Lawyer’s General Reading List
Consider the following letter by Abraham Lincoln
Letter to Isham Reavis on November 5, 1855
My dear Sir:
I have just reached home, and found your letter of the 23rd. … If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with anybody or not. I did not read with anyone. Get the books, and read and study them till, you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New-Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places. ***Very truly Your friend
A. Lincoln
Our list of required reading for Illinois divorce and family lawyers starts here:
Illinois Family Law—
Gitlin’s Illinois Annotated Family Practice Desktop Code–Updated Annually. Two-volume set.
Volume I contains:
- 750 ILCS 5/ Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act.
- Illinois Supreme Court Rules—the 900 Section. View this as a supplement to our family-law statutes.
- 750 ILCS 10/ Illinois Uniform Premarital Agreement Act.
- 750 ILCS 16/ Non-Support Punishment Act.
- 750 ILCS 22/ Uniform Interstate Family Support Act.
- 750 ILCS 28/ Income Withholding for Support Act.
- 750 ILCS 36/ Uniform Child-Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act.
- 750 ILCS 45/ Illinois Parentage Act of 2015.
- 750 ILCS 60/ Illinois Domestic Violence Act of 1986.
Other key statutes to read include:
- 710 ILCS 35/ Uniform Mediation Act.
- 735 ILCS Code of Civil Procedure Articles: 2, 7, 11, 19 and 21
- 740 ILCS 110/ Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Confidentiality Act.
