If you have a small business in Oakbrook Terrace or elsewhere in DuPage County, or if you are considering starting a small business, it is important to consider having general counsel for your company. You might be thinking: if I simply have a small business with only a couple of employees, do I actually need general counsel?

As an article in the Boston Globe explains, small business—of all sizes and types—regularly encounter legal issues that require the assistance of counsel. When you are trying to run a business, attempting to tackle some of these legal matters on your own can be frustrating and complicated, and in some cases seemingly impossible.

What Kind of Business Should I Form?

Do you have a last will and testament? Hajj 2017 begins the evening of Wednesday, August 30 and ends the evening of Monday, September 4. Each year, millions of Muslims from around the world participate in the five-day Hajj pilgrimage. Indeed, as an article in the Independent suggests, about two million Muslims are likely to participate in the pilgrimage this year to Mecca. Given that Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam, all Muslims who are able to make the pilgrimage are required to do so at least once.

Since the pilgrimage comes with physical challenges and requires travel to Saudi Arabia, it is important to have your affairs in order before going to Hajj. As such, if you are planning on going for Hajj, you should speak with a Muslim trusts and estates lawyer in DuPage County today to get started on this process.

Why Should I Create a Will Before Going to Hajj? 

If you have a small business in DuPage County or are considering starting your own business, why do you need to have a lawyer? A DuPage County business law attorney can consult on a wide variety of issues that your small business might face. While there are many aspects of running a small business that you may be able to handle on your own, it is important to have experienced counsel who can guide you through the issues you are likely to face as a small business owner.

Why Do I Need to Work with a Small Business Lawyer?

There are many aspects of running a small business that you can handle on your own. For instance, choosing a name for your business and even developing a business plan may be relatively easy for you to manage, especially if you have experience in business. However, there are many issues for which it is important to be able to consult with a DuPage County business law attorney. At Farooqi & Husain Law Office, we regularly consult with small business owners on some of the following issues:

Is your small business healthy when it comes to legal risks and vulnerabilities? It can be exciting to start a small business in Oakbrook Terrace and to begin the process of structuring your business and hiring employees, but many legal complications can arise. When most small business owners hear the term “audit,” they think of a tax audit or an accounting audit. Legal audits are very different. Legal audits refer to a small business owner hiring a DuPage County business law attorney who can review the operations of your business to determine whether you are likely to encounter any legal problems.

When you run a small business, there are already many complicating matters that arise on a daily or weekly basis concerning your company. You should not have the extra anxiety of worrying about whether your business is at risk of a legal issue. A business lawyer in Oakbrook Terrace with experience assisting Muslim small business owners can speak with you today.

What Happens during a Legal Audit?

Do you have a business in DuPage County and are considering entering into a strategic partnership? Or are you thinking about forming a startup company in the Oakbrook Terrace area and wondering how you can have a mutually beneficial relationship with another small business or company? Strategic partnerships are agreements between two companies that are not in competition with one another, and they are agreements that benefit both companies. If you are looking to grow your company, strategic partnerships can help in a number of ways — from issues surrounding marketing to supply chains to technology.

Strategic partnerships are one way that you can expand, and it is important to learn more about strategic partnerships and, ultimately, how you should structure the deal.

Small Businesses and Strategic Partnership Agreements

If you are starting a small business in DuPage County or are thinking about expanding your current business to include employees beyond yourself, you are likely to have many questions about the steps you need to take in order to hire new employees. For instance, what kind of information do you need to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) before you can hire new employees? What information will you need to obtain from your new employees in order to hire them legally and to withhold federal income taxes from their paychecks? What kinds of information are you required by law to provide to new employees?

At Farooqi & Husain Law Office, we are committed to helping members of the Muslim community in DuPage County create and expand their small businesses, and a DuPage County business law attorney at our firm can answer all of your questions about hiring new employees. In the meantime, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) provides helpful tips for creating a checklist for any small business owner who is planning to hire new employees.

Helpful Checklist for Small Business Owners Who Are Hiring New Employees

Do you have a business in DuPage County? Do you work with an off-site bookkeeping service? Many Muslim small business owners in Oakbrook Terrace and nearby communities want to ensure the success and profitability of their businesses, and hiring an off-site bookkeeping service is an effective way to save on your taxes, have cleaner books, and ultimately to assess how the business is doing.

At Farooqi & Husain Law Office, our dedicated DuPage County business lawyers have years of experience assisting members of the Muslim community and helping our clients to maintain strong businesses. If you have questions about why you should hire an off-site bookkeeping service, an experienced DuPage County business lawyer can speak with you today.

Dealing with Complicated Business Issues

When you have a small business in Oakbrook Terrace, it is extremely important to have an accountant and a lawyer on your side. While an accountant can sometimes answer questions that might seem relevant for your attorney and vice versa, both accountants and lawyers can help with specific tasks related to the finances and day-to-day running of your business.

For many members of the Muslim community in DuPage County who form small businesses, you should understand the importance of working with an accountant and a business law attorney. At Farooqi & Husain Law Office, we have been serving Muslim clients in Oakbrook Terrace for years and can provide you with some helpful information to get you started.

Choosing a Small Business Structure

Are you considering adoption in DuPage County? Adoptions can be extremely complicated, and as such, it is important to speak with an experienced DuPage County family law attorney. Yet just because adoption is complicated does not mean that this is not a valuable route to pursue. Indeed, according to a fact sheet from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), more than 15,000 children have been adopted in Illinois in the last decade, allowing those children to have a permanent home while also providing the adoptive parents with the same rights and responsibilities as biological parents.

What are some common issues surrounding adoption in Illinois with which you should familiarize yourself?

Who Can Adopt a Child in Illinois?

When you are considering whether you need to make a will, it is important to think carefully about your assets and where you want them to go when you are no longer living. For most members of the Muslim community in DuPage County, it is extremely important to make a will. If you do not have a will at the time of death, then your assets will be distributed according to Illinois intestacy laws.

These laws are complicated, and they can prevent your assets from being distributed according to your wishes. While many people assume they only need to make a will if they have real property, any assets at all can be subject to Illinois intestacy laws at the time of death. By making a will, however, you can ensure that your property goes to the parties to whom you planned to leave it—whether it is your children or a neighborhood nonprofit foundation.

Do You Have Intended Beneficiaries Who Are Not Close Family Members?

If you are in the process of getting divorced in Oakbrook Terrace, you already may know about changes to Illinois family laws regarding child support. In brief, under Illinois law (750 ILCS 5/), child support has been determined based on a percentage-based model (or formula) that looks at the number of children for whom support is awarded, and the payor and payee parents are determined by who has primary physical custody of the child. For each child, a certain percentage of the payor parent’s income is the amount of child support awarded. However, as you may know, there have been a number of changes to family and divorce law in Illinois over the last year or so, and one of those changes concerns child custody. Parents are no longer awarded legal and/or physical custody, but instead, those terms have been replaced with “parental responsibilities” and “parenting time.”

Why is this important for child support? Another major change to the law concerns how child support is determined, and the new law will take effect in July 2017. When July 2017 rolls around, how will “parenting time” have an impact on the amount of child support paid?

Understanding the “Income Shares” Model of Child Support

At Farooqi & Husain Law Office, we have been assisting clients for years with a wide variety of family law matters, and we are committed to helping members of the Muslim community in DuPage County who have questions about filing for divorce and need representation. We understand how difficult a divorce can be even under the best circumstances, and we also know how important it is that your voice and needs be heard. In DuPage County, the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act (750 ILCS 5/) governs most aspects of divorce, including property division, spousal maintenance, and child custody. We regularly represent clients who have concerns about property division and finances, as well as those whose primary concerns deal with the allocation of parental responsibilities and other matters involving your children.

In DuPage County, the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act (750 ILCS 5/) governs most aspects of divorce, including property division, spousal maintenance, and child custody. We regularly represent clients who have concerns about property division and finances, as well as those whose primary concerns deal with the allocation of parental responsibilities and other matters involving your children.

When you are thinking about filing for divorce and are seeking out a divorce lawyer, what questions should you ask? The following are some important questions to ask your divorce attorney.

When you are served with divorce papers in DuPage County, you are likely to have many questions about the next stages of the Illinois divorce process and how they will impact you. Whenever you are going through a divorce, it is extremely important to have an experienced DuPage County divorce attorney on your side. At Farooqi & Husain Law Office, we have years of experience helping members of the Muslim community in Oakbrook Terrace and surrounding areas, and we can speak with you about your case today.

In the meantime, it is a good idea to have a basic understanding of the steps that will follow after you have been served with divorce papers in Illinois.

Filing a Written Response to the Petition for Divorce

In Illinois divorce cases, it is very important that you work with a dedicated Oakbrook Terrace family law attorney from the start of your case to ensure that all divorce matters are handled smoothly. It is a good idea to have a better understanding about how the divorce process will work. At Farooqi & Husain Law Office, we are committed to providing family law services to members of the Muslim community, and we can answer your questions about divorce today.

If you want to divorce your spouse, there are some key features of Illinois divorce that you should learn more about.

Have You Met the Requirements to File for Divorce?

Going through the immigration process can be difficult and anxiety-inducing, particularly for many members of the DuPage County Muslim community. We would like to focus on one aspect of the immigration process that many DuPage County residents have questions about: the immigration interview. Once you have applied for permanent resident status in the U.S. (also known as applying for a green card), you will begin a series of steps that likely will culminate in an interview with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). We know that an in-person interview can produce fear among many people who are new to this country, but we want to emphasize that this is a standard part of the “adjustment of status” procedure that can result in you becoming a permanent resident of the United States.

What should you expect to happen at this interview?

Understand that USCIS Interviews Are a Normal Part of the Process

How much does it cost to file an immigration application or petition in the United States? Regardless of what those fees used to cost, they will rise this December. According to a news release from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the fees required for most immigration applications and petitions will increase, and those new fees take effect as of December 23, 2016. The fees may impact immigrants who are seeking certain benefits. At Farooqi & Husain Law Office, we are here to help Muslims in Oakbrook Terrace who have questions about immigration fees and other matters related to immigration applications and petitions.

Learning More about the Immigration Fee Increases

As the news release explains, USCIS will raise its fees, based on a final rule published in the Federal Register back in October, in an effort to provide additional funding to the agency. Specifically, the news release notes that “USCIS is almost entirely funded by the fees paid by applications and petitions for immigration benefits,” and in order to keep up with costs, federal law requires that USCIS review its fee schedule every two years to “determine the funding levels necessary to administer the nation’s immigration laws, process benefit requests, and provide the infrastructure needed to support those activities.”

Applying for a green card, or permanent resident status, in the United States can be a complicated process. Indeed, no matter what your current immigration status or that of a family member, the intricacies of immigration law can be frustrating and difficult to comprehend. Given that there are many members of the Muslim community in DuPage County that are learning more about the process of obtaining a green card, it is important to understand how the process works and whether you might be eligible for a “One Step Process.”

At Farooqi & Husain Law Office, we are committed to helping Muslims throughout DuPage County with all immigration law issues. One of our experienced Oakbrook Terrace immigration attorneys can speak with you about your case today.

Applying for a Green Card

If you are in the process of filing for divorce in Illinois or are dealing with issues of child custody and child support, it is important to pay attention to changes in the law that will take effect on July 1, 2017. The changes to the law will impact the ways in which child support payments are calculated, and as such are likely to alter the ways in which residential parents must be responsible for playing a role in the financial support of the child in connection with the non-custodial parent. At Farooqi & Husain Law Office, we have years of experience assisting members of the Muslim community with complex legal issues concerning divorce and child support. We are here to help with your case today.

Learning More about the Changes to Illinois Child Support Law

Current Illinois child support rules under 750 ILCS 5/505 and 750 ILCS 5/510 follow a form that has become familiar in many states across the country: what is known as a “percentage of income” formula that determines that a child support payment will be based on the net income of the non-residential, or non-custodial, parent. Based on the net income of that parent, the amount of child support is standardized according to the number of children for whom support is owed. Currently, this is how child support determinations work:

When you are thinking about filing for divorce in Oakbrook Terrace or another area of DuPage County, you are likely to have many questions about property division. For many members of the Muslim community, issues surrounding property division can be complicated and frustrating given that property division involves more than just financial assets. To be sure, your home, and even valuable family heirlooms, can be subject to division in a divorce proceeding in Illinois.

The Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act (750 ILCS 5/), abbreviated as the IMDMA, governs property distribution in our state following a divorce.

Classifying Separate Property and Marital Property

Many members of the Oakbrook Terrace Muslim community have dealt with immigration law issues concerning family members’ immigration. In order for family-based immigrants to come to the United States, there is a requirement of the I-864 Affidavit of Support under Section 213A of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

What is this Affidavit of Support? In short, it is used to show the federal government that the immigrant seeking to come to the U.S. has “adequate means of financial support,” according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website, and thus that the immigrant is “not likely to rely on the U.S. government for financial support.”

Who Must Submit an I-864 Affidavit of Support