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

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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

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