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.
January likes to pretend it’s a restart button—new planners, new promises, the quiet confidence that this year will be different. But in Cook County, Illinois, January 14, 2026 showed up with paperwork instead. That was the day Nicholas Turner filed a petition for dissolution of marriage, turning the calendar page into something closer to a footnote: factual, final, and impossible to argue with.
Nicholas Turner, 41, and Megan L. Schultz, 39, were married on August 20, 2016, in Chicago, a city that knows how to host both beginnings and exits without much ceremony. Both parties still live and work there. The petition says they have lived separate and apart for more than six months, long enough for irreconcilable differences to harden into something permanent. Reconciliation, the filing notes, has already been attempted and found impracticable—like trying to repair a machine after it has decided it no longer wants to run.
There are no children in this marriage and no pregnancies waiting in the wings. Both parties are capable of supporting themselves, and the petition asks the court to bar spousal maintenance entirely—past, present, and future—closing that door with emphasis. During the marriage, the couple accumulated marital property and debts, which Nicholas Turner asks the court to divide equitably. Non-marital property, acquired outside the marriage, is to be returned to its respective owner.
Filed through attorney Steven Novak of Kogut Novak & Kaminski, LLC, the petition asks for a judgment dissolving the marriage; a formal bar on spousal maintenance; a just division of marital property; assignment of all non-marital property to the proper party; and any other relief the court deems just and equitable.
January promises clean starts. Sometimes, it delivers clean endings instead.
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