In re Marriage of Maslin

Summary

Case Summary: In re Marriage of Maslin - In Maslin, the Third District held that a trial court's refusal to scrutinize billing entries underlying a §508(b) fee petition—awarding $37,318.14 without any reasonableness analysis—constituted an abuse of discretion, reinforcing that while fee entitlement after contempt is mandatory, the amount requires independent judicial evaluation under the Callahan factors with a documented decisional calculus. Critically, the opinion signals that fee petitions must segregate entries attributable to contempt enforcement from broader litigation costs, and that courts must affirmatively show their work connecting awarded fees to the specific matters triggering the mandatory-fee provision.

The opposing counsel who filed a $37,318.14 fee petition at 4:23 p.m. the day before the hearing just watched the Third District torch that entire award. And the reason wasn't some arcane procedural technicality—it was because the trial court said the quiet part out loud: "It is not my job to look at every single billing statement."

Wrong. That is literally the job.

In re Marriage of Maslin is a Rule 23 order, so it's not binding precedent in the traditional sense. But if you're practicing family law in Illinois—particularly if you're litigating contempt and fee petitions in Will County or anywhere in the Third District—you need to understand what this case just crystallized about attorney fee awards under 750 ILCS 5/508(b). Because the next time you're standing in front of a judge arguing about fees, this opinion is the roadmap for how to win or how to lose.

The Mandatory-But-Not-Unlimited Framework

Here's what too many practitioners get wrong about section 508(b): they hear "mandatory" and assume it means "blank check."

It doesn't.

Section 508(b) of the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act creates a two-step framework that the Third District made unmistakably clear in Maslin:

1. Step One—Entitlement: Upon a finding of contempt or a determination that a petition was filed for an improper purpose, the award of fees is mandatory. The court doesn't have discretion to deny fees entirely. This is settled.
2. Step Two—Amount: The court retains full discretion to determine whether the amount of fees sought is reasonable. This requires actual analysis. Actual review. Actual judicial labor.

The trial court in Maslin collapsed these two steps into one. It found contempt (correctly, apparently—that wasn't challenged on appeal), and then rubber-stamped the entire fee petition without scrutiny. The Third District held that the failure to exercise discretion when the law requires it is itself an abuse of discretion, citing Miller v. Lake Car Sales, Inc.

Read that again. Not exercising discretion is an abuse of discretion. The judge who thinks they're being efficient by skipping the analysis is actually creating reversible error.

What the Court Must Actually Do

The Maslin opinion reinforces the well-established framework from Kaiser v. MEPC American Properties and Estate of Callahan. A fee petition must identify, and the court must evaluate:

• The specific services performed
• Who performed them (attorney vs. paralegal vs. associate)
• The time expended on each task
• The hourly rate charged

Beyond that, the court must weigh the Callahan factors: the skill and standing of the attorneys employed, the nature and complexity of the case, the importance of the matter, customary charges for comparable services, the benefit to the client, and—critically—the connection between the fees requested and the amount actually in controversy.

That last factor is where Maslin gets devastating for sloppy fee petitions. The underlying contempt findings involved $1,365.25 in unpaid extracurricular expenses, $1,804.11 in tax equalization, and a dispute about motorsports participation. The fee petition? $37,318.14. The court needed to explain—with what Robinson v. Point One Toyota calls a "reasonably specific explanation" exposing the court's "thought process" and "decisional calculus"—how fees exceeding the disputed amounts by an order of magnitude were reasonable.

It didn't. It couldn't. Because it refused to look.

The Segregation Problem That Will Kill Your Fee Petition

Here's the strategic intelligence buried in this opinion that most attorneys will miss on first read: the fee petition in Maslin included charges for extensive parenting litigation beyond the contempt matters. The billing entries swept in work on issues that had nothing to do with the three contempt findings or the frivolous motion determination.

Section 508(b) makes fees mandatory for the contempt. It does not create a mechanism to recover fees for your entire case by bootstrapping them onto a contempt finding. On remand, the trial court will have to distinguish between fees attributable to the contempt enforcement and fees attributable to other litigation—and the opinion strongly suggests that only the former category qualifies under 508(b).

If you're filing a fee petition after a contempt finding, segregate your billing entries before you file. Create a clear, defensible categorization that ties each entry to a specific contempt count or improper-purpose finding. If your billing records are a undifferentiated mass of parenting litigation, custody disputes, and contempt enforcement all blended together, you're handing your opponent the same argument that worked in Maslin.

And if you're on the receiving end of a bloated fee petition? You now know exactly where to attack.

The Due Process Question the Court Deliberately Left Open

The Third District explicitly declined to address the father's due process argument—that receiving a fee petition at 4:23 p.m. the day before a hearing, while incarcerated on contempt, denied him a fair opportunity to respond. The court found the reasonableness issue dispositive and didn't reach the constitutional question.

That's a live grenade sitting on the table for the next case.

Think about what happened procedurally: a party was in custody on a civil contempt finding, received a fee petition with less than 24 hours' notice, and had a hearing two days later on $37,318.14 in claimed fees. The court awarded every penny without examining the records. Even though the Third District didn't rule on due process, the factual pattern screams for objection.

If you're the respondent in this scenario, object on the record to the timing. Object to the inadequacy of notice. Object to your inability to review and respond to the billing entries. Create a record that preserves the due process argument even if the court overrules you. The Third District left that door wide open, and the next panel may walk through it.

The Oral Pronouncement Trap

One more tactical note from Maslin that practitioners need to internalize: the court cited Danada Square v. KFC for the proposition that oral pronouncements control over conflicting written orders. The trial court's written order awarding fees didn't contain the damning language about refusing to review billing statements. But the transcript did. And the transcript won.

This cuts both ways:

If you're the fee petitioner: Be careful what your judge says on the record. If the court makes offhand comments suggesting it didn't review the entries, that's appellate ammunition regardless of what the written order says.

If you're opposing the fee petition: Make sure you have a court reporter. Ask questions that force the court to articulate its reasoning on the record. If the judge says something like "I'm not going to go through every line item," that statement just became your appeal. Politely but firmly ask the court to state its basis for finding the fees reasonable. If it can't or won't, you've preserved exactly the error that reversed the award in Maslin.

The Cyber-Discovery Angle You're Not Thinking About

For the high-net-worth practitioners in the room, Maslin intersects with a growing reality in family law: billing records are discoverable digital artifacts. When a fee petition drops with hundreds of entries spanning years of litigation, the metadata, the billing software exports, the time-entry patterns—all of that is fair game for scrutiny.

Block billing—where an attorney lumps multiple tasks into a single time entry—is already disfavored. But in an era where billing platforms timestamp every entry and modification, a respondent armed with the right forensic tools can challenge not just the reasonableness of the hours but the accuracy of the records themselves. Were entries created contemporaneously or reconstructed after the fact? Do the timestamps on the billing software match the claimed dates of service? Were entries modified after the fee petition was filed?

This is where family law and cybersecurity intersect in ways most practitioners haven't caught up with yet. If your opponent's billing hygiene is poor—and after Maslin, courts will be looking more carefully—digital forensics on billing records becomes a legitimate discovery tool. Especially when the fee petition arrives the night before a hearing and the entries look suspiciously polished.

What This Means on Remand—and for Your Next Case

The Third District reversed and remanded for a proper reasonableness determination. On remand, the trial court must:

• Actually review the billing entries
• Segregate fees attributable to contempt enforcement from fees for other litigation
• Apply the Callahan factors
• Provide a reasonably specific explanation of its analysis
• Enter an award that reflects the court's independent judgment on reasonableness—not just a rubber stamp of the petition

The opinion does not hold that no fees should be awarded. Fees under 508(b) remain mandatory upon contempt findings. But the amount must survive actual judicial scrutiny, and the court must show its work.

For Illinois family law practitioners, the takeaway is operational: build your fee petitions to survive the analysis that Maslin now demands, and attack your opponent's fee petitions using the framework the Third District just reinforced.

The Bottom Line

"It is not my job to look at every single billing statement" is now a quote that will appear in appellate briefs across this state for years. Every family law judge in Illinois should read it as a warning. Every practitioner should read it as an opportunity.

If you're facing a contempt finding and a bloated fee petition—or if you've won a contempt finding and need to build a fee petition that actually holds up on appeal—the margin between a sustainable award and a reversed one is the quality of the analysis underneath it.

That analysis starts with counsel who understands both the mandatory entitlement framework and the discretionary reasonableness inquiry, and who builds the record accordingly from day one.

If you're navigating a high-conflict dissolution with contempt exposure, fee disputes, or complex discovery issues, schedule a consultation with our team now. Your opponent's fee petition—or your own—needs to be built for the appellate standard Maslin just reinforced. The other side may not have read this opinion yet. That's your advantage. Use it.

Full Opinion (PDF): Download the full opinion

Written by Jonathan D. Steele

Chicago divorce attorney with cybersecurity certifications (Security+, ISC2 CC, Google Cybersecurity Professional Certificate). Illinois Super Lawyers Rising Star 2016-2025.

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