Most people get flowers or candy for Valentine's Day. Henry Lee got a divorce.
He said it's the best present he could've hoped for.
"I'm just trying to get it over with," Lee, 34, said Tuesday while waiting to finalize proceedings in Chicago. "Once it gets to the point of getting divorced, nothing matters."
Today may be the most romantic day of the year, but it's business as usual in the Daley Center's divorce court.
In Judge Michele Lowrance's courtroom -- one of three venues for divorce proceedings in Cook County Circuit Court on Tuesday -- 22 cases were slated to be heard. Almost 1,500 Chicago couples have filed for divorce so far in 2007, a rate of approximately 50 per day.
However, Illinois has the third lowest divorce rate in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In this state, 2.6 out of every 1,000 people got divorced in 2004. Only in Massachusetts (2.2) and Pennsylvania (2.5) had fewer couples call it quits.
Couples eager to split don't generally consider filing for divorce on a specific day, according to divorce lawyer Enrico Mirabelli. That is, unless they really hate each other.
"All's fair in love and divorce," Mirabelli said. "I've gotten people divorced on February 14. It's somewhat ironic. But they're just so happy to be divorced."
Ron Carvelli of Oak Lawn has manned Cook County's domestic relations desk for more than 24 years. He recalled processing more than 300 divorce petitions on a Valentine's Day several years ago -- a marked increase from the normal 75 to 100.
"We worked overtime," Carvelli said. "It seemed awfully strange. Somebody was trying to be very vicious."
Veteran divorce lawyers have detached themselves from the irony of practicing on Valentine's Day.
Both Mirabelli and Donald C. Schiller, a divorce attorney and lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, said they only avoid litigating divorces at Christmas time -- both because they don't want to break up families during the holiday season, and because pushing it to the New Year allows couples to file one final joint tax return.
Mirabelli, who has been happily married for more than 20 years, said he was looking forward to celebrating Wednesday with his wife, Valentina, who had great expectations for the holiday.
"If I don't get her a gift," he said, "she'll be meeting with Schiller on Thursday."
