Lisle Estate Planning Attorneys

Having a great estate plan isn't beyond your reach. Our Lisle estate planning attorneys are experienced, affordable, and ready to eliminate your estate planning worries and develop a comprehensive plan tailored to YOUR needs.

• Revocable Living Trust:   A Revocable Living Trust ensures that your estate can be administered immediately upon your death without the need for a probate estate, which can cost 5% to 10% of the value of your estate in attorney fees, will take over a year before your loved ones can access your assets, and will be stressful and difficult for your executor.  Like a will, your trust will provide for the distribution of your assets and will appoint a fiduciary to administer your estate.    
• Pour-Over Will: A pour-over will creates a document to name guardians for your minor children.  It also provides that, if for some reason probate becomes necessary, the wishes stated in your trust will control your probate estate.  
• Healthcare Power of Attorney:  A Healthcare Power of Attorney enables you to name loved ones to make healthcare and major life decisions on your behalf should you become mentally incompetent. 
• Financial Power of Attorney: A Financial Power of Attorney allows you to name loved ones to take financial and legal actions on your behalf in the event off mental incompetence.  If you become mentally incompetent from disease, illness, or old age, and you have both a Healtchare Power of Attorney and a Financial Power of Attorney, a costly, stressful, and time-consuming guardianship proceeding will not be necessary in order for your loved ones to take action on your behalf.
• Living Will:  A living will is an end-of-life instruction document in which you can state your wishes regarding termination of life support in the event that you are in an irreversible coma, which can relieve the emotional burden on your family members. 

Read an article by our Lisle estate planning attorneys about the elements of a typical estate plan. 

A revocable living trust can accomplish several goals:

• Allows your estate to avoid a costly and time-consuming probate case. Illinois law generally requires a probate case to be opened if you pass away owning any real estate (including your home or condo) outside of a trust or more than $100,000.00 of non-real estate assets outside of a trust or outside of payable on death accounts with living beneficiaries.  In this situation, your estate will go through probate even if you have a will.    
• Ensures that the right people inherit your assets. With either a will or a trust, our Lisle estate planning attorneys can help you ensure that your property and assets go quickly and smoothly to the right people when you pass.  Our Lisle estate planning attorneys will help you specify who will receive specific pieces of tangible property, like heirlooms, jewelry, or vehicles.  We will also work with you to plan for every contingency, so that even if intended beneficiaries predecease you, your estate plan will account for this possibility and will not have to be revised. 
• Will give you long-term control over how assets are managed after you pass. Unlike a will, which directs assets to be distributed shortly after you pass upon the closure of your probate estate, your trust can maintain control of your assets for many years after you pass.   
• Appointment of fiduciaries and minimizing the potential for disputes. Our Lisle trust attorneys can assist you in ensuring that you have friends and family members that you trust appointed to:

1. Manage your assets on your behalf should you become mentally incompetent; 
2. Manage your estate's assets for minor and young adult children until they reach ages of responsibility; 
3. Distribute your personal property and remaining trust assets to the people you want to receive them. 

Naming trustees allows you to minimize potential disputes after you pass and determine who should be responsible for administering your estate.

Read an article from our Lisle estate planning attorneys on Wills & Trusts. 

A Living Will is an end-of-life instruction document.  If you go into an irreversible coma and your doctors believe that the only purpose for continued life support would be to keep you permanently in a vegetative state, a Living Will can instruct your doctors to terminate life support.  Living Wills allow you to make end-of-life decisions in advance, rather than leaving those decisions to your loved ones.  

Our clients tend to have living wills for two reasons:

• Because they want to relieve the emotional burden on their loved ones by taking the decision to terminate life support out of their hands; or
• Because they simply do not want to be left in an irreversible vegetative state either for physical reasons or to avoid draining their family's finances.  

‍An alternative to a Living Will is to state your end-of-life wishes in your Healthcare Power of Attorney.  This can relieve some of the emotional burden on your loved ones while still leaving the ultimate legal decision of whether to terminate life support in their hands.  

Whether to execute a living will is a very personal decision, and there is no right or wrong answer.  Our Lisle estate planning attorneys will help you weigh your options and guide you through your decision-making process. 

​Read an article from our Lisle estate planning attorneys about living wills. ​