Disclaimer: All facts gleaned from the filings stated hereafter are only as truthful as the petitioner. The tone of this article expresses a style of writing historically employed by America’s greatest writers and, as such, is for opinion purposes only. No intentional harm is due. Do not read if the topic of divorce (even your own) causes you emotional distress. Continue at your own risk.

The cold had settled deep into January, the kind that quiets a house and makes every decision sound louder in your own head. The petition dissolving the marriage of Gregory Carrigan and Sarah Carrigan was filed January 8, 2026, in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, when the year was still finding its footing. A filing at the tail end of December—those last days between December 28 and 31—often carries the ache of urgency, as if a marriage must be buried before the calendar flips. January filings arrive differently. They move slower, weighted with the understanding that nothing has been rushed, that the reckoning has already been lived.

Gregory, 39, and Sarah, 37, married in Cook County in September 2020 and made their home in Niles. Gregory stayed behind the walls of that home as a full-time father, while Sarah, now voluntarily unemployed, shared the same address even as the marriage fractured. One child, K.C., born in 2023, binds their lives together beyond paperwork. Gregory’s petition describes a household where irreconcilable differences hardened into distance, reconciliation no longer possible, and separation stretched over months.

Represented by attorney Lindsey G. Mirabella of Mirabella, Kincaid, Frederick & Mirabella, LLC, Gregory asks the court for a judgment dissolving the marriage; sole decision-making authority and the majority of parenting time for the child; temporary and permanent child support and maintenance paid by Sarah, retroactive to the filing date; allocation of child-related expenses; equitable division of marital property and debts; award of each party’s non-marital property; and any further relief the court finds just.

Filed at the year’s beginning, the petition feels less like an escape and more like survival—an insistence that care, labor, and love given quietly inside a home be counted, even after the doors have closed.

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