Living Trust Chicago Suburbs Blog

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

What Does An Estate Attorney Do?

Estate Planning is a broad category of legal practice. It encompasses 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 her family, with her estate, with the government, with medical care providers, and with her community.

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

• Wills and Trusts
• Guardianship for Disabled Adult
• Asset Protection
• Medicaid Planning
• Wealth and Tax Planning
• Planning for Incapacity

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

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