Allocation of Parental Responsibilities · Lake County, IL

By Deanna Bowen, The Law Office of Deanna J. Bowen · Updated September 2026

There is no age at which a child can decide which parent to live with in Illinois. A child’s wishes are one of the 17 best-interest factors in 750 ILCS 5/602.7(b), weighed by the child’s maturity and ability to express a reasoned, independent preference — considered, never controlling. Both parents are presumed fit, and Illinois has no equal-time and no gender presumption. Lake County attorney Deanna Bowen explains what actually moves a judge.

Almost every parent who walks into a Lake County parenting case has heard the rumor. At 12, or 13, or 14, the child gets to pick. A friend heard it from a co-worker. A relative heard it in a different state, decades ago. It gets repeated so often that parents plan around it — and some children are told, by a well-meaning adult, that the decision is theirs.

It is not. There is no such age anywhere in Illinois law, and a judge who treated a child’s preference as the deciding vote would be applying the wrong standard.

What follows is what the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act actually says, how a judge in the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit actually hears from a child, and what carries real weight in these cases. Every statute and local rule quoted below was checked against the official text at ilga.gov and the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit’s published local rules in September 2026.

One note on words before we start. Illinois stopped using “custody” and “visitation” as legal terms on January 1, 2016. What many people still call custody is now two separate things under the Act: significant decision-making responsibilities (750 ILCS 5/602.5) and parenting time (750 ILCS 5/602.7). Those are the terms a judge, a parenting plan, and your paperwork will use, so they are the terms used here.

When Can a Child Decide Which Parent to Live With in Illinois? No Age Exists — the Statute Weighs Wishes, It Doesn’t Follow Them

The controlling language is short. Under 750 ILCS 5/602.7(a): “The court shall allocate parenting time according to the child’s best interests.”

To decide what those best interests are, § 602.7(b) tells the court to “consider all relevant factors, including, without limitation,” a list of 17. The child’s preference is factor two:

“(2) the wishes of the child, taking into account the child’s maturity and ability to express reasoned and independent preferences as to parenting time;”

Read that closely, because three things follow from it.

  • It is a factor, not a trigger. It sits in a list the court weighs together. Nothing in the section gives it extra weight at any age, and nothing makes it decisive.
  • The measure is maturity, not birthdays. The statute asks about the child’s “maturity and ability to express reasoned and independent preferences.” A thoughtful 12-year-old who can explain their reasoning may be heard more carefully than a 16-year-old who cannot — and neither one decides.
  • “Independent” is doing real work. A preference a parent manufactured is not an independent preference. More on that below.

The parallel section for decision-making, 750 ILCS 5/602.5(c), uses nearly identical language as its first listed factor: “the wishes of the child, taking into account the child’s maturity and ability to express reasoned and independent preferences as to decision-making.”

Search the Act for an age at which a child chooses and you will not find one. Where age does appear in these sections, it is doing something else entirely — § 602.7(b)(3), for example, looks at the caretaking each parent performed “in the 24 months preceding the filing of any petition for allocation of parental responsibilities or, if the child is under 2 years of age, since the child’s birth.” That is a look-back window, not a right to choose.

Where the Preference Fits: 17 Parenting-Time Factors and 15 Decision-Making Factors

A single judgment in an Illinois parenting case contains two separate allocations, decided under two separate lists. Understanding that is the fastest way to see how small a slice the child’s preference occupies.

Parenting time — 750 ILCS 5/602.7(b), 17 factors

Alongside the child’s wishes, the court weighs: each parent’s wishes; the caretaking each parent actually performed in the previous 24 months; any prior agreement or course of conduct about caretaking; the child’s relationships with parents, siblings and others who significantly affect the child; the child’s adjustment to home, school and community; the mental and physical health of everyone involved; the child’s needs; the distance between homes, the cost and difficulty of transportation, each person’s daily schedule and the parents’ ability to cooperate; whether a restriction on parenting time is appropriate; physical violence or threats against the child or a household member; each parent’s willingness to put the child’s needs ahead of their own; each parent’s willingness to facilitate and encourage a close and continuing relationship with the other parent; abuse against the child or a household member; whether a parent is a convicted sex offender or lives with one; the terms of a deployed parent’s military family-care plan; and “any other factor that the court expressly finds to be relevant.”

Significant decision-making — 750 ILCS 5/602.5, four areas and 15 factors

Section 602.5(b) directs the court to “allocate to one or both of the parents the significant decision-making responsibility for each significant issue affecting the child,” and names four:

  1. Education — “including the choice of schools and tutors.”
  2. Health — “all decisions relating to the medical, dental, and psychological needs of the child and to the treatments arising or resulting from those needs.”
  3. Religion — allocated “in accordance with any express or implied agreement between the parents,” with the court considering “evidence of the parents’ past conduct as to the child’s religious upbringing” in the absence of such an agreement. This area also has an off-switch found nowhere else in the section: the court “shall not allocate any aspect of the child’s religious upbringing if it determines that the parents do not or did not have an express or implied agreement for such religious upbringing or that there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate a course of conduct regarding the child’s religious upbringing that could serve as a basis for any such order.”
  4. Extracurricular activities.

That phrase — “for each significant issue” — is the part most parents have never been told. Decision-making is not all-or-nothing. One parent can hold education, both can share health, and religion can be left unallocated, all in the same judgment. Section 602.5(c) then supplies 15 best-interest factors for those allocations, beginning with the child’s wishes and including each parent’s past participation in decision-making, the parents’ ability to cooperate, and the level of conflict between them.

One more piece of § 602.5 rarely makes it into online summaries: under subsection (d), each parent has sole responsibility for routine decisions and for emergency decisions affecting the child’s health and safety during that parent’s parenting time, whoever holds the significant decision-making responsibilities.

How a Judge Actually Hears From a Child — and Why Coaching Backfires

If a child does have a view, it rarely arrives the way parents imagine. Illinois judges do not, as a rule, put children on the witness stand between two parents. The Act supplies other routes, and each has rules.

The in-camera interview — 750 ILCS 5/604.10(a)

This is the mechanism most parents are actually asking about. The statute reads:

“The court may interview the child in chambers to ascertain the child’s wishes as to the allocation of parental responsibilities. Counsel shall be present at the interview unless otherwise agreed upon by the parties. The entire interview shall be recorded by a court reporter. The transcript of the interview shall be filed under seal and released only upon order of the court.”

Four things worth pulling out of that sentence: the interview is discretionary (“may”), it happens in chambers rather than in open court, counsel are present unless the parties agree otherwise, and it is recorded and sealed — the transcript is not something a parent simply receives.

An attorney, a guardian ad litem, or a child representative — 750 ILCS 5/506

Section 506(a) lets the court appoint an attorney to serve in one of three distinct roles, and the differences matter:

  • Attorney for the child. Provides “independent legal counsel for the child” and owes “the same duties of undivided loyalty, confidentiality, and competent representation as are due an adult client.”
  • Guardian ad litem (GAL). Investigates the facts, interviews the child and the parties, and — unless the court directs otherwise — submits a written report, written recommendations, or a proposed parenting plan “not less than 30 days before a final hearing or trial.” The report comes into evidence without foundation, and the GAL may be deposed and called as a witness for cross-examination.
  • Child representative. Advocates for what they find to be the child’s best interests, “shall consider, but not be bound by, the expressed wishes of the child,” does not render a report and cannot be called as a witness, and instead discloses their position in a pre-trial memorandum and offers evidence-based legal arguments.

That middle line is the one to sit with. A child representative is required to consider the child’s stated wishes — and equally required not to be bound by them. Under § 506(a-5), in deciding whether to appoint anyone at all, the court considers the nature and adequacy of the evidence, other available methods of getting information, and the parties’ resources; and § 506(b) requires the appointee to file a detailed invoice every 90 days, with the court ordering payment by one or both parents or another source. If your case involves a GAL, our Lake County guide to what a guardian ad litem does and how they are appointed walks through the role in more detail.

Evaluations and investigations — § 604.10(b), (c) and (d)

The court may also seek the advice of a professional to help determine best interests; that advice must be in writing and sent to counsel and the court “not later than 60 days before” the anticipated hearing, and the professional testifies as the court’s witness subject to cross-examination. A party may separately move for an evaluation under § 604.10(c); that evaluator’s report must reach the attorneys of record “no less than 60 days before the hearing on the allocation of parental responsibilities, unless otherwise ordered by the court,” and if a party fails to comply, “the court may not admit the evaluator’s report into evidence and may not allow the evaluator to testify.” Subsection (d) allows a court-ordered investigation and report.

Why coaching backfires

Nothing in this article is more important for a parent to hear. The statute does not ask for the child’s words; it asks for the child’s “reasoned and independent preferences.” A preference a parent scripted is, by the statute’s own wording, not an independent one — and independence is exactly what the people gathering the child’s views are there to assess: a guardian ad litem who, under § 506, “shall investigate the facts of the case and interview the child and the parties,” or the judge conducting the § 604.10(a) interview with counsel in the room.

The risk is not limited to that one factor being discounted. Two other factors in § 602.7(b) point straight back at the coaching parent: factor 13, “the willingness and ability of each parent to facilitate and encourage a close and continuing relationship between the other parent and the child,” and factor 12, “the willingness and ability of each parent to place the needs of the child ahead of his or her own needs.” Pressuring a child to deliver a message is the kind of conduct a court can weigh under both.

What Does Not Decide It: The 50/50 Myth, the Gender Myth, and Conduct That Doesn’t Touch the Child

Three beliefs drive a remarkable number of bad decisions in Illinois parenting cases. Each is answered by the statute.

There is no 50/50 presumption. The Act contains no presumption that equal parenting time is in a child’s best interests. The standard in § 602.7(a) is the child’s best interests, allocated on the 17 factors — which may or may not produce an equal schedule in a given family.

There is no gender or maternal preference. Section 602.7(b) is gender-neutral, and the presumption it does contain runs to both parents: “It is presumed both parents are fit and the court shall not place any restrictions on parenting time as defined in Section 600 and described in Section 603.10, unless it finds by a preponderance of the evidence that a parent’s exercise of parenting time would seriously endanger the child’s physical, mental, moral, or emotional health.” Preponderance of the evidence means more likely than not; restrictions themselves are governed by § 603.10.

Marital misconduct that did not touch the child is off the table. Section 602.7(c) is one sentence: “In allocating parenting time, the court shall not consider conduct of a parent that does not affect that parent’s relationship to the child.” Section 602.5(e) says the same for decision-making. So an affair, standing alone, is not a parenting-time argument. Illinois takes the same approach to property, which § 503 divides without regard to marital misconduct.

That limit has a hard edge, and it is worth stating plainly: conduct that does bear on the child is squarely in the analysis. Both factor lists reach it. For parenting time, § 602.7(b) names physical violence or the threat of it “directed against the child or other member of the child’s household” (factor 11), “the occurrence of abuse against the child or other member of the child’s household” (factor 14), and whether a parent is a convicted sex offender or lives with one (factor 15). For decision-making, § 602.5(c) names physical violence or the threat of it “directed against the child” (factor 12), abuse against the child or another member of the child’s household (factor 13), and whether a parent is a sex offender (factor 14).

In Lake County: What the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit Requires Before a Judge Decides

Illinois statutes are identical statewide. What changes from county to county is local practice — and in Lake County, two published local rules shape almost every parenting case before a judge weighs anything. These are Lake County rules, not statewide Illinois law; a parent filing in another county should ask a local attorney what applies there.

  • Parenting education (LCR 4-4.01). Parents of minor children who have appeared, or otherwise personally submitted to the jurisdiction of the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit, in a pre- or post-judgment “D,” “DC,” “F” or “FA” case in which an aspect involves the allocation of parental responsibility or parenting time must attend the circuit’s Parenting Education Program — a program that “shall be at least four (4) hours in duration” — “as soon as possible, but no later than 60 days after the LCR 4-2.02 Initial Case Management Conference, unless otherwise ordered for good cause shown.” The certificate is e-filed with the court.
  • Family mediation (LCR 4-4.07). “Mediation shall be ordered by the Court, except upon a showing of the existence of an impediment to mediation, or for other good cause shown, for all disputes involving child(ren) allocation of parental responsibility, allocation of parenting time, relocation, or other non-economic issues relating to the child(ren), either pre-judgment or post-judgment.” The rule defines an impediment as a condition — including domestic violence or intimidation, substance abuse, child abuse, mental illness or cognitive impairment — “that hinders the ability of a party to negotiate safely, competently, and in good faith.” Parents who do not present a parenting plan at the initial case management conference are referred to mediation.
  • Appointments come from a vetted list (LCR 4-4.04). The Presiding Judge of the Family Division maintains a “506 Referral List” of qualified guardians ad litem, child representatives and attorneys for children, and the rule requires an appointee to be able to interview the child “without any limitation or impediment or if the child is too young to be interviewed, observe the child.”

There is also a clock overhead: LCR 4-4.07 notes that Illinois Supreme Court Rule 922 requires allocation-of-parental-responsibility proceedings to be resolved to a final order within 18 months of service, absent good cause.

There is a practical point buried in those rules. Mediation is a real opportunity to shape the schedule your child will actually live with, and working an agreement out between you can be faster, less expensive and far more tailored than a plan written after a contested trial — because you and the other parent know things about your child’s week that no factor list can capture.

“My 15-Year-Old Wants to Move In With Me” — Why a Changed Mind Is Not Self-Executing

This is the version of the question that brings most parents to a lawyer, and it has a clear answer: a child cannot move themselves. An entered parenting plan or allocation judgment stays in force until the court changes it.

Modification runs through 750 ILCS 5/610.5:

  • Decision-making responsibilities generally cannot be revisited by motion “earlier than 2 years after its date,” unless the court permits it on affidavits showing reason to believe the child’s present environment “may endanger seriously his or her mental, moral, or physical health or significantly impair the child’s emotional development.” Parenting time may be modified at any time, without a showing of serious endangerment, “upon a showing of changed circumstances that necessitates modification to serve the best interests of the child.”
  • The general standard, § 610.5(c): the court modifies when necessary to serve the child’s best interests if it finds, by a preponderance of the evidence, that on facts arising since — or not anticipated in — the existing judgment, “a substantial change has occurred in the circumstances of the child or of either parent.”
  • The narrow exceptions, § 610.5(e): no changed circumstances need be shown where the modification is in the child’s best interests and it reflects the arrangement the child has actually been living under, without parental objection, for the preceding six months; or it is a minor modification; or it corrects an agreed plan the court would not have approved had it known the circumstances; or the parties agree. Section 610.5(d) also requires the court to modify in line with a parental agreement unless that is not in the child’s best interests.
  • Section 610.5(f) allows attorney’s fees to be assessed against a party whose modification action is vexatious or harassing, and allows the court to bar a parent who repeatedly files frivolous modification motions.

So is an older child’s changed wish, by itself, a substantial change? Illinois’ most direct recent answer is In re Marriage of Trapkus, 2022 IL App (3d) 190631, where the Appellate Court refused to make a blanket rule in either direction. As the court put it, “This is not to say that the aging of children or their expressed wishes could never constitute a substantial change in circumstances,” but “[w]e will not blanketly hold that a substantial change in circumstances either does or does not occur… when the children have expressed a desire for more equal parenting time.” Instead, such circumstances “must be considered in their context,” with the court weighing the totality of the circumstances.

Which is the honest answer to give a parent: it can matter, it is not automatic, and nobody can tell you in advance how a particular judge will weigh it. If you are considering a change, our post-judgment page explains how modification and enforcement work in Lake County.

If You Were Never Married, the Same Factors Apply

Parents who were never married sometimes assume a different rulebook applies to them. It does not — but there is one step first. Parentage has to be legally established under the Illinois Parentage Act of 2015 (750 ILCS 46). That can happen in several ways, including a statutory presumption, a signed Voluntary Acknowledgment of Paternity, an administrative or judicial order, and genetic testing where parentage is disputed. Once parentage is established, the allocation of parental responsibilities and parenting time is decided under the same IMDMA sections described above, on the same best-interest factors, with the same absence of any age at which a child chooses.

Frequently Asked Questions

When can a child decide which parent to live with in Illinois? There is no such age. Under 750 ILCS 5/602.7(b)(2) the child’s wishes are one of 17 best-interest factors, weighed by the child’s “maturity and ability to express reasoned and independent preferences.” The court decides; the child is heard.

Does a 14-year-old’s preference carry more weight than a 10-year-old’s? Potentially, but not because of the birthday. The statute measures maturity and the ability to give reasons that are the child’s own. An older child who can explain their thinking is usually easier to credit — and their preference is still one factor among many.

Will my child have to testify in court? Usually not. Under 750 ILCS 5/604.10(a) a judge may interview the child in chambers, with counsel present unless the parties agree otherwise, recorded by a court reporter and filed under seal. A guardian ad litem or child representative appointed under 750 ILCS 5/506 is another common route.

Does Illinois presume equal parenting time? No. The Act contains no equal-time presumption and no gender preference. The presumption it does contain is that both parents are fit (§ 602.7(b)), rebuttable only by a preponderance of the evidence that a parent’s parenting time would seriously endanger the child.

My ex cheated. Does that affect parenting time? By itself, no. Section 602.7(c) bars the court from considering “conduct of a parent that does not affect that parent’s relationship to the child.” Conduct that does affect the child — violence, threats, abuse — is a different matter and appears expressly in the factor lists.

Can my child’s preference alone get the parenting plan changed? Not automatically. Modification runs through 750 ILCS 5/610.5 and generally requires a substantial change in circumstances plus the child’s best interests. Trapkus (2022) declined to hold that a child’s changed wishes either always or never qualify — the court looks at them in context.

Do these rules change if I want to move? Relocation is its own statute with its own notice requirements, and it reaches a parent who has been allocated a majority of parenting time or equal parenting time (750 ILCS 5/609.2). The mileage is measured from the child’s current primary residence: where that residence is in Lake County, an in-state move of more than 25 miles meets the distance part of the statutory definition (750 ILCS 5/600(g)) — see our guide to Illinois relocation rules for Lake County parents.

Questions About Parenting Time in Lake County? Let’s Talk About Your Family’s Situation

If your child has told you they want to live with you — or told your co-parent that — the worst thing you can do is treat it as a decision that has already been made, and the second worst is to coach them. What actually helps is building the record the statute asks a judge to look at: who has been doing the caretaking, how the child is doing at home and in school, how each parent supports the child’s relationship with the other, and what schedule genuinely fits this child’s week.

The Law Office of Deanna J. Bowen has spent more than two decades on family cases in Lake County and the north suburbs, from Gurnee and Waukegan to Libertyville, Mundelein and Round Lake. We help parents work toward agreed parenting plans where that is possible, and present the § 602.7 and § 602.5 best-interest factors clearly when it is not. We cannot promise any particular schedule or outcome — no one honestly can — but we can make sure the court hears the version of your family that the statute actually asks about.

To talk it through in a confidential initial consultation, call (847) 623-4002, contact us online, or read more about how we handle the allocation of parental responsibilities and divorce in Lake County.

This article is general legal information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Illinois law changes and every case turns on its facts. Consult a licensed Illinois family-law attorney about your situation.

Primary sources: 750 ILCS 5/602.5, 5/602.7, 5/604.10, 5/506, 5/610.5, 750 ILCS 46 (Illinois Parentage Act of 2015); Nineteenth Judicial Circuit Local Court Rules, Chapter 4, Part 4.00; In re Marriage of Trapkus, 2022 IL App (3d) 190631.