My name is Tom Olofsson. I am a lawyer. I help families plan for the future.

My office phone is (773) 905-1193

For more info please visit my main site http://www.mytrustlawyer.com

My hope is that this site will make it easy for you to find out about estate planning and to see if you would like me to help you plan for your family’s future.

My goal is to help you decide which estate planning tools are best for you and your family. Before you go on please Bookmark this page so you can come back whenever you want.

The focus is on you.

The planning process begins with you and your wishes for your family. My first concern is you and your family. My job is to help make sure that your plans for your loved ones come true.

My practice is limited to helping individuals and families plan their estates. I do this by meeting with you to discuss your family situation and how best to pass your assets on to your loved ones.

Why I make house-calls.

I came from a large family. I remember how much work it was for my mom to load all of us into the station wagon when it was time to visit the doctor. I always thought it would have made more sense for the doctor to hop in his car and come to our house.

With this in mind, I meet with my clients in their homes. Many families have told me that my coming to them makes life easier particularly when a member of the family is elderly or has special needs. It is much easier and it makes more sense for me to hop in my car… well you get the idea.

My office is at the Southwest corner of Chicago in the Beverly area. I do not expect you to come here. I am available to meet with you in your home. I look forward to meeting you and I will be happy to talk with you about your particular situation.

Contact me.

You can contact me by e-mail at: tom@mytrustlawyer.com

My office phone is (773) 905-1193

My office is located at 9924 S. Walden Parkway, Chicago, Illinois 60643

The following pages will help you decide how to go ahead from here.

by Tom Olofsson, Attorney at Law, www.MyTrustLawyer.com (773) 905-1193

An elder attorney works in the area of Elder Law. elder law is a broad category of legal practice. It includes many of the issues that are important to Seniors and to their families.

It touches upon several areas and combines them into a unified approach to the way a Senior interacts with his or her family, estate, government programs, with medical care providers, and with his or her community.

The main areas that we explore with our Senior clients include:

• Power of Attorney
• Last Will and Testament
• Living Trust
• Guardianship for Disabled Persons
  
• Nursing Home Questions and Problems
  
• Elder Abuse and Neglect
• Medicaid Planning Protecting wealth and property from high nursing home bills
  
• Preparing for Incapacity
• Passing Wealth and Property to children and loved ones

by Tom Olofsson, Attorney at Law, www.MyTrustLawyer.com (773) 905-1193

Sometimes a power of attorney is not the best way to insure that someone you choose will be ready to help you when you need it.

In these situations a better choice may be to set up a trust.

A trust can have, built into it, helpers who are able to help you when you are unable to visit the bank on your own. The helpers named in a trust are known as trustees. The trustees you choose are much more able to assist you than the agent in a power of attorney.

You can be the trustee of your own trust. The successor trustees you pick are ready to help you when you need it.

Banks and brokerage firms do not get in the way of successor trustees in the same way they do with agents under powers of attorney.

by Tom Olofsson, Attorney at Law, www.MyTrustLawyer.com (773) 905-1193

There are several important questions to consider when deciding whether the person you are considering is a good pick to be the agent under your power of attorney.

1. Will they do what I want them to do? If they will not carry out your wishes then do not pick them even if you may hurt their feelings.

2. Will they have the strength to do what needs to be done? If they are not able to deal with tough questions and tough people who will try to sway their minds then do not pick them.

3. Are they good with money? If they can not balance their own checkbook they are not likely to balance yours. If they do not keep good records then they will get themselves into trouble when they lose track of your money.

4. Will they consider the job to be a burden? If they look at this as a burden then they will not pay enough attention to your finances.

5. Will they give in to outside influences? If the porson you pick is married to someone you do not want involved in your affairs then do not pick them. You do not want them to choose between their duty to you and their spouse.

6. What happens when the person you pick becomes ill themselves? You must pick a back-up agent to serve if your first choice is not available.

If you have no one who fits all the requirements then you still have an option.

Pick the person who is closest to the ideal then pair them with a professional.

A trust company can lend expert advice to the person you believe has your best interest at heart. When a family works with a professional trustee they have the perfect reason defense against people who would ask them to do the wrong thing. “The trust company is in charge of that”, is the easy way for them to get out of tight situations.

In any case we recommend that a trust company be named as a back-up agent against the day when the person you have named is unable to perform the task.

by Tom Olofsson, Attorney at Law, www.MyTrustLawyer.com (773) 905-1193

I met with a very nice woman today. She is very worried about her future.

She told me that a family member had moved in with her to help with her ill husband. She was very happy to have the help and was so grateful that she had decided to leave her home to the helpful family member when she died.

She has since changed her mind about the gift. It turns out that the helpful famiiy member has helped herself to the nice lady’s assets.

A power of attorney was signed which gave the helpful family member the authority to go help the nice lady when she could not make it to the bank.

The nice lady’s husband died a couple of months later. The nice lady turned over a life insurance policy to pay for his funeral. The life insurance company called the nice lady to tell her that there was a problem.

The helpful family member had changed the beneficiary on the insurance policy on the life of the husband who had just passed away. After a little more investigation the nice lady found that the helpful family member had also cashed in an annuity contract.

The total stolen to this point is about $101,000.

Please consult an attorney before you sign papers which you do not fully understand or about which you have questions

When you give someone a gift you sign a check. When you buy a meal in a restaurant you sign a credit card receipt. When you sell your home you sign a deed.

In each of these situations it is your signature which marks that the sale has taken place.

If you wish to give assets to someone after your death something different has to happen. Since you can not sign after you have died, someone’s signature must be substituted in place of yours.

The judge, in probate court, substitutes his or her signature in place of yours. This way any money and property, which was in your name when you died, can get into the hands of the new owner.

This is one of the main purposes of the probate court.

The process is more complicated than I have described but when you boil it down, we are getting stuff out of your name and into the name of the people you let it to in your will.

There is nothing wrong with the process. Probate allows for the orderly passing of assets from generation to generation.

The reasons which most people give for wanting to avoid probate can be boiled down to these:

1. Probate takes too long. Probate generally takes between 1 and 2 years. During the process the family must relive the death of their loved one with each new letter and each meeting with the executor. If the process can be made shorter then the family will be able to come to closure more quickly.

2. Probate costs too much. The fees for Probate in Illinois can average around 5% of the estate. With home values over $300,000, in many cases, it is easy to see why people would like more of their money to go to their children and less to court costs and fees.

3. Probate is not private. The courts are public and so are most court records. Many people I talk with keep their financial matters private during their lives and tell me that they would like to keep their information private even after their deaths. It makes sense, then, to stay keep the estate distribution process private. This can be done by staying out of court.

Tom Olofsson, Attorney at Law, www.MyTrustLawyer.com

The information in this website is accurate to the best of my knowledge. It reflects the laws in the State of Illinois at the time the pages were written. Every effort has been made to make them readable and understandable to non-lawyers because of this they are necessarily general in nature.

Visiting this website does not create a lawyer-client relationship. The only way to become a client is for us to meet personally and discuss whether I am the right lawyer to work with you on your plans for the future. I also need to satisfy myself that your interests do not conflict with my duty to any of my existing clients. This sort of planning and analysis is not easily done by email or by phone.

The information in this site is designed to get you started on the planning process. You should always check with a lawyer before signing any legal documents. Any sample forms found on this sight are for reference only since I can not control how they are completed nor how they are executed.

I am licensed to practice law in Illinois. There are important differences between Illinois laws and those of other states. If you are a resident of another state please consult an attorney licensed to practice law in your home state. If you are not currently working with a lawyer you may want to call your state bar association.

Circular 230 Disclosure: Content of this message cannot be used to avoid IRS tax penalties. For more information go to http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/65xx/doc6512/07-06-EstateTax.pdf

Looking for housing for yourself or a family member can be a tedious process. The details can be hard to sort through and can lead to information overload can lead to snap decisions made more from fatigue than because the perfect fit has been found.

The National Association of elder law Attorneys (NAELA) helps seniors find housing quickly and easily. This is no magic bullet but it makes the work much easier.

The new tool, available at www.naela.org , helps elders and their families search through over 60,000 senior housing communities, including all of the licensed senior housing facilities. Seniors can search by location (city, county, ZIP code) facility name, special services, and payment options.

The NAELA Senior Housing Locator makes it easy to sort through the 247 different senior housing license types. The Locator also provides a simple way to review nursing home and rehab community inspection reports. There are also links to the nursing home comparison pages on medicare.gov.

This new search tool really streamlines the process of narrowing down housing choices.

Tom Olofsson, Attorney at Law, www.MyTrustLawyer.com (773) 905-1193