At Family, Wealth & Legacy Legal Solutions, our approach to estate planning is drastically different from the traditional, run-of-the-mill approach you will find anywhere else. Our proven process has been carefully crafted and well thought out to ensure that our clients are educated and empowered to make informed decisions in the best interest of their family.
Instead of the traditional one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach to planning you will find at most firms or online, we take pride in going the extra mile and developing a life-long relationship with our clients as their trusted advisor. Our Family, Wealth & Legacy Planning Process was designed to ensure our clients are properly educated, understand all of their options, collaborate in designing their plan, and are aware of how to implement and manage their estate after their legal documents are signed. Most importantly, our clients receive the personalized, comprehensive and compassionate experience they deserve. Where we take the time to genuinely get to know our clients, understand their family dynamics and focus on the well-being of their family, not only today, but for generations to come.
Our goal is to keep families out of court and out of conflict and protect them from life’s most common legal problems: Death, Disability and Divorce. To accomplish this goal, we’ve designed the Family, Wealth & Legacy Planning Process to be an ongoing relationship with our firm, so your plan will evolve and grow with your family over time and be updated when there are changes in your circumstances or the law. That is why our clients experience the peace of mind of knowing that every aspect of their family, wealth & legacy has been carefully considered and protected. More importantly, that we will be there to guide them and support their family along the way, regardless of what the future may hold.
Our Comprehensive Estate Planning Process Sets Us Apart
Estate Planning is one of the most complicated and complex areas of the law. In our experience, the traditional two meeting process is simply not enough time for you to understand all your options and carefully consider important decisions that will affect your family for generations to come. It doesn’t allow an attorney to truly get to know you, your family dynamics and strategically guide you in implementing the best strategy to achieve the outcomes you want for your family. Our 4 Meeting Process has been developed over time to account for the education, design, implementation, management, funding and oversight of our client’s plans for the duration of their life.
Step 1
Educational Strategy Session
Step 2
Design Meeting
Step 3
Review & Signing Meeting
Step 4
Binder Delivery and Legacy Meeting
Review Meetings
Every 3 Years
The traditional approach to estate planning is known as “transactional law.” Law firms produce documents for money and their primary focus is to find the most efficient way to complete the transaction. The traditional estate planning experience consists of 2-meetings, an introductory planning meeting and a signing meeting. If you’re lucky maybe a phone call or two. In total, you’ll spend 1-3 hours with an attorney. Afterward, the client leaves with a fancy binder and set of instructions, but no additional guidance is provided to ensure the plan will work when needed most. There is also no follow-up, additional support or process to update the plan as a client’s circumstances, family, wealth or the law changes.
At Family, Wealth & Legacy Legal Solutions, our focus is not only on producing the best documents and plans for our clients at an affordable price, but more importantly, building a life-long relationship as their trusted advisor to assist them and their family when they’ll need us most. We have developed a proven process to ensure our clients’ are properly educated, aware of their options and how to properly manage their plans, so it will play out seamlessly and their family will stay out of court and out of conflict.
- We structure our meeting process this way to ensure our clients are educated and empowered to make their own informed decisions on their plan. More importantly, so they understand how to manage their plan after it’s signed and there is a system in place to ensure it is reviewed periodically, in three-year review meetings, to account for any change in circumstance involving their family, wealth or the law, necessitating changes to be made.
- Family Meetings: We can utilize three-year review meetings to facilitate family meetings to explain the plan to your family members, ensuring they understand and appreciate your intentions and the provisions made for them.
- Team Approach: In addition, by working closely with your financial, tax and insurance advisors, Family, Wealth & Legacy Legal Solutions can implement a holistic and comprehensive estate planning strategy that encompasses and protects all aspects of your life and legacy. Three-year review meetings can be utilized as a joint meeting with all your important advisors.
How Family, Wealth & Legacy Legal Solutions Is Different
We use innovative systems to help families protect what matters most and intentionally design the legacy they’ll leave behind.
- STEP 1: Educational strategy session
- STEP 2: Design Meeting
- STEP 3: Review & Signing Meeting
- STEP 4: Binder Delivery
In the traditional model of estate planning, there is a lack of attention to what matters most to people and should be addressed in an estate plan. At FWLLS, we believe there is more to wealth than money and that’s why we’ve incorporated a strong focus on the legacy our client’s will leave behind. Our firm films our clients sharing their wishes, values, stories and guidance for their named individuals and children. These interviews will live on indefinitely for generations to come, preserving your wishes, wisdom and legacy in time, while allowing future generations of your family to feel as if they know you. More importantly, if you’re a parent to young kids, what value could you place on knowing that just in case anything ever happened, your kids would have a video to watch every night telling them how much they mean to you and that you love them.
If you are a parent of minor children, you absolutely need an estate plan, regardless of how much money you have. No parent would ever want their children to be placed in the care of strangers (foster care), or a judge to decide their fate without any input. At FWLLS, we have developed the Children’s Protection Plan™️ to ensure this will never happen to your kids if the worst-case scenario becomes reality. Through a combination of naming long-term, short-term and standby guardians, along with babysitter instructions and letters to your children’s care providers, we can ensure that your children will always be protected in the event of an emergency.
Over $70 billion is being held in the Departments of Unclaimed Property nationwide. The bulk of which are accounts where the rightful owner could not be located, most likely due to their incapacity or death. This is a major flaw in most estate plans. Our clients receive a custom flash drive containing a complete financial inventory in an editable digital format. Our process helps families get more financially organized than they’ve ever been before and empowers them to keep their plan up to date without any additional fees or ongoing legal assistance. An up-to-date financial inventory will allow our client’s loved ones to locate all their assets quickly and easily when something happens to them, so none of their property is unaccounted for and lost to their state’s Department of Unclaimed Property.
When you create an estate plan, you will select your friends, family and trusted advisors to serve in very important roles to protect your family. Yet, with most plans, the people you’ve named don’t know you’ve named them, where to locate the necessary documents, who to contact or what they’ll need to do to fulfill their role according to your wishes. This leads to confusion and crisis for families, where their intended and so-called "plan" fails when needed most. At FWLLS, with your approval, we send letters to notify the people you’ve selected, provide them with guidance and our contact information to assist in implementing the plan when your family needs it most.
Our clients receive a toolkit to assist in writing letters to their children and grandchildren for life’s major milestones, such as a graduation, wedding, or the birth of their first child. We encourage our clients to spend an hour or two a year reviewing, revising and adding to these letters. That way no matter what happens, our clients will be a part of their family’s important life events, passing down their wisdom and guidance in those special moments. Hopefully, after years of perfecting them, our clients will get the opportunity to personally give their children these letters and create an unforgettable memory. Yet, regardless of what happens, these letters will be their most prized possession and meaningful gift from their parent after they’re gone.
The most common and bitter disputes amongst families are over items of personal property and things you’d never expect, from family heirlooms, holiday platters, silverware, photo albums or jewelry. When creating an estate plan, traditional planning documents simply say your estate is evenly divided amongst your heirs but doesn’t provide any guidance for how to divide their "things." At FWLLS, we provide our clients with a digital version of a Personal Property Memorandum on their customized flash drive, which may be updated and edited for the rest of their life. Allowing them to list all their important and prized possessions, the story or history behind that item, and who they want to receive it. This is a legally enforceable document that is incorporated into their estate plan and instead of making the task of cleaning out their home burdensome and contentious, it will become a celebration of their life, where their loved ones can share a lifetime of memories and the stories behind all their things.
When someone passes away, the days and weeks that follow are a whirlwind of chaos and confusion for their family and loved ones. From writing an obituary, to making funeral arrangements and notifying family and friends. At an extremely difficult and emotional time, they are tasked with managing your finances, legal affairs and guessing as to what you would have wanted to be the final celebration of your life. This list of decisions is never-ending, from arrangements for burial or cremation, selection of a funeral home, casket, urn, flowers, pictures, memorial service, and the list goes on. At FWLLS, we provide our clients with a thorough memorandum that allows them to take control of their final memory and relieve their family from the burden of guessing as to what they would have wanted. A digital version of this document on a customized flash drive allows our clients the freedom to update their wishes throughout their life without any additional legal fees or the necessity of even contacting our office. More importantly, it will allow their family to focus on grieving and provide them with peace of mind and comfort, knowing that all the necessary details are easily and simply documented in one location summarizing their life and final wishes.
At FWLLS, we understand that it is difficult for people to understand the importance and impact of dozens of dense legal documents, which make up their estate plan and contain all the decisions they’ve made. We never want our clients, or their loved ones, to have to search through hundreds of pages to find the information they are looking for. That is why we create a full color diagram summarizing our client’s entire estate plan on a one-page map. This simple and easy to understand map summarizes all the important decisions and documents for easy reference when our clients need it, or for their family in an emergency.
Our Illinois Estate Planning Services
Protecting Your Loved Ones At Death
In the world of estate planning, there are three phases of life that need to be considered:
- When you’re alive and well: When you’re alive, well and life is grand, you have the ability to prepare for the other two phases of life. Attorneys refer to this stage as when you have "capacity" to make legal decisions on your own behalf.
- When you’re alive but not well: When you’re alive, but not well and unable to legally care for yourself, this is what we call "incapacity." Once you’re incapacitated, you’ve lost the right to put a plan in place and legally sign documents, make health care decisions or manage your assets. This is where powers of attorney, medical directives and trust documents come into play and can allow you to avoid probate court, but a Will has nothing to do with this phase of your life.
- When you die: When you die, your powers of attorney and medical directives die with you. Any property that is owned solely in your name will need to be distributed, and your family will be required to go to probate court to legally transfer ownership to your beneficiaries. I’ll apologize in advance for making this point repeatedly, but most people don’t seem to understand that where there is a Will, there is a probate. Meaning, if you only have a Will at the time of your death, your family will have to go to court to gain access to your property. Yet, your Will provides the Judge with instructions on what you wanted, instead of deferring to the rules and laws of your state. The only way to avoid probate completely when you die is to carefully manage every single thing you own, or to properly transfer your property into a Trust.
Your Last Will and Testament
Important considerations regarding Wills include:
- Wills are only activated upon death, offering no assistance while you are alive, but may be “incapacitated,” due to illness or injury.
- One of the public’s biggest misconceptions is that you can avoid probate with a Will. Contrary to popular belief, having a Will does not circumvent probate; rather, it essentially requires that your family will have to go through the court process known as probate.
- A Will is an ideal document for appointing guardians for minor children, preventing disputes and ensuring your children are cared for as you wish.
Wills are only activated upon death, offering no assistance with incapacity due to illness or injury.
Having a Will does not circumvent probate; rather, it is essentially your estate’s entry into the probate process.
A Will is an ideal document for appointing guardians for minor children, preventing potential familial disputes and ensuring your children are cared for as you wish.
If you have a Will based plan, your children will receive their inheritance at the age of 18, outright and unprotected from creditors, predators, bankruptcy or divorce.
Revocable Living Trust
A Revocable Living Trust is simply an agreement between three people: The Grantor, Trustee and Beneficiary. During your life, you can serve in all three roles because you give your property, to yourself as the trustee of your trust, to hold for your own benefit. Contrary to popular belief, nothing in your life will change based upon having your property held in a Revocable Living Trust and you will still file your taxes, manage your property and go about your life in the same exact way you always have. The only difference is that your accounts will now be owned by you as the Trustee of your Trust.
A Revocable Living Trust is one of the most valuable estate planning tools available to the public and the only cost-effective option that will be effective during their life, if they become unable to care for themselves, and death.
If managed properly, a trust allows the public to avoid the expense, attorney’s fees and delay of the court processes known as guardianship or conservatorship, during their life, and probate, upon their death.
A Trust based plan offers complete privacy and control of the management of your wealth and affairs during life and transfer upon your death.
A Trust based plan permits you the flexibility of choosing when and how your children will receive their inheritance. This allows parents to encourage wise financial stewardship, financial education, and begins planting the seeds of promoting generational wealth for your family. It allows you to provide your children with assistance, incentives for money to be disbursed for particular life events (college, wedding, purchase of a home, starting a business, birth of a child), receipt of funds at specific ages or stages, or to remain in a Lifetime Asset Protection Trust indefinitely.
Revocable Living Trusts
Are active during your lifetime, offering the flexibility to implement your plan with minimal effort, impact on your day-to-day life and allowing you to alter the trust’s terms as your circumstances change. Serving as a cornerstone of many estate plans, revocable living trusts protect your family and wealth during both your life and death. If managed properly, a revocable living trust will streamline the wealth transfer process, ensure privacy and reduce administrative burdens and costs for your heirs, as a guardianship will not be necessary if you are incapacitated, nor probate upon your death.
Children’s Protection Plan
Safeguards your children against unforeseen circumstances through our proven method for selecting long-term, short-term, standby and financial guardians. Along with your ongoing input and instruction to your named care providers and fiduciaries, legacy letters, and legacy interviews that capture your wishes and wisdom to be passed down to your loved ones, regardless of what the future may hold.
Asset Protection & Tax Planning
Through proper planning, you can strategically take advantage of certain laws and provisions of the tax code that will allow your family to avoid unnecessary estate taxes. You also can delay distributions of your wealth to your children and heirs in such a way that will ensure they do not receive access to their inheritance until such time as they are ready. Yet, the greatest gift that you can give to future generations of your family is to create a trust for them that they cannot create themselves through a Lifetime Asset Protection Trust. This strategy seeks to instill proper financial education for your heirs and begin creating generational wealth for your family by protecting their inheritance from creditors, predators, bankruptcy and divorce.
In Illinois, we are one of one of twelve states that impose an estate tax. The Illinois estate tax is imposed on any estate in excess of $4 million at a graduated tax rate ranging from .8% – 16%. Even more importantly, Illinois does not allow portability between spouses, which means that any unused portion of a deceased spouse’s exemption cannot be transferred to their surviving spouse. That is why it is imperative for Illinois households with a total net worth above $4 million to create a plan to avoid these unnecessary and costly taxes. By creating such a plan, you can also avoid any unnecessary federal taxes and implement strategies, so your family can avoid the federal tax rate of 40% on any amounts over the federal estate exemption. In 2024, the federal estate and gift tax exemption is $13.61 million per individual (or the combined amount of $27.22 million for a married couple). Yet, on January 1, 2026, the federal estate tax exemption is scheduled to sunset and be reduced to the amount of $5.6 million per individual, adjusted for inflation from 2017.
Different Types of Trusts to Achieve Our Clients’ Goals
Trusts are incredibly versatile, designed to cater to a wide range of estate planning objectives. Various trust options exist based on what the client hopes to achieve and when they want the trust to be effective. Whether securing a child’s education or providing for a philanthropic cause, trusts can be customized to fulfill your specific aspirations.
Protecting You and Your Loved Ones in Case of Disability
Powers of Attorney
A Power of Attorney authorizes another person (the attorney-in-fact) to make specific decisions on your behalf, based on your instructions and the powers you have provided to them as outlined within the document. This authority is intended to allow the people you have chosen to manage your affairs and step in your shoes, while you are alive and unable to make your own decisions. Yet, this authority ends upon your death. To ensure a decision-maker is in place in case of incapacity, employing a durable power of attorney is advised. Regular updates to your durable power of attorney are recommended, as financial institutions may be wary of accepting older documents.
Health Care Documents (Or Advance Directives)
An advance directive, or what is otherwise known as a “living will,” specifies your preferences for medical and personal care in situations where you’re unable to make or communicate decisions for yourself. This document is legally enforceable in Illinois and allows you to designate a decision-maker on your behalf, including instructions for circumstances in which you would not want life-prolonging treatment. Additionally, a HIPPA Waiver provides authorization to your medical providers to share your medical information with designated individuals of your choosing. More importantly, a Health Care Power of Attorney will grant your chosen family members and loved one’s with the authority and instructions to make informed decisions about your health care. In addition, at FWLLS we also prepare a Declaration for Mental Health Treatment to prevent involuntary mental health treatments or medications to be forced upon our clients based upon our prior experience in litigating these difficult cases. We also prepare an Appointment of Agent to Control Disposition of Remains, where our clients nominate someone of their choosing to fulfill the obligations and directives set forth within their Remembrance and Services Memorandum, that they will update throughout their life to express their final wishes.
Be Proactive
We help families avoid life’s most common legal problems: Death, Disability and Divorce.
At FWLLS, we strive to educate and empower our clients to make informed decisions to protect their family, wealth and legacy. Through personalized and strategic planning, along with ongoing guidance and support as their trusted advisor, it is our mission to protect you and your loved ones from life’s most common and devastating legal problems: death, disability, and divorce. Begin your estate planning journey in Oak Brook Terrace today by booking a call. Your family, wealth and legacy deserve nothing but the best.