Choosing a successor trustee can sound simple until you picture the person actually doing the job. If you can no longer serve as trustee, your successor trustee steps in to manage the trust. That means paying bills, handling accounts, dealing with property, keeping records, communicating with beneficiaries and following the instructions you left behind. The person you’re closest to might be a great choice…or be completely wrong for the role. What Will They Actually Have to Do

Choosing someone to care for your children if you’re no longer able to is a deeply personal part of estate planning. The hardest part is that the person who feels right in one area may be less ideal in another. A sibling may share your values but live across the country, while a close friend who knows your children well but already has a demanding household. Rather than looking for a perfect replacement for you, focus on who could give your children a stable, loving home and

Estate planning is easy to postpone when you’re raising a young family. Work, children, household expenses and day-to-day responsibilities are already competing for your attention. Creating a will or trust isn’t exactly top-of-mind, and it’s something that can be put off until later. As your family grows, though, the decisions surrounding an estate plan become harder to ignore. Having children, buying a home and building savings introduce questions that probably weren’t par

Buying a home is one of the biggest financial moves you'll make. You hired a realtor, worked with a lender, sat through the inspection, and signed a stack of closing documents. There's one step most buyers skip: making sure the home is properly tied into an estate plan. If something happens to you - an accident, a serious illness, an unexpected death - what happens to the house? Who makes decisions? Who inherits it, and how smoothly does that process go? An estate plan answer

Illinois doesn't legally require you to hire a real estate attorney to buy a home. But in the Chicago area - Cook, Lake, and DuPage counties included - most buyers do, and the way the standard purchase contract here is structured is a big reason why. There's a formal attorney review period built into it. Before you decide to skip legal representation, it's worth understanding what that period actually gives you. What the Illinois Attorney Review Period Actually Is Most reside

Most people hear "estate planning" and picture a stack of legal documents. Wills, trusts, powers of attorney - the usual. And yes, those are the backbone. But if your plan is nothing but legal paperwork, it's doing the bare minimum. Your estate plan should reflect who you actually are. Not just your assets and your beneficiaries, but your values, your reasoning, your relationships. The legal documents handle the mechanics. The pieces below handle everything else. Here are six