Naperville Estate Planning Lawyer
Estate Planning Attorney for Families in Naperville, Illinois
Take charge of your legacy today; contact us to start building an estate plan that provides peace of mind and protection for your loved ones.
At Nowling Law, LLC, we understand that estate planning goes beyond just creating legal documents. It’s about securing your family’s future, protecting your assets, and ensuring your wishes are respected. With a well-structured estate plan, you can provide clear guidance for your loved ones during difficult transitions, giving both you and your heirs peace of mind.
Naperville Estate Planning Attorney
Whether going on a trip, launching a new business in the Central Business District, or buying a home, planning ahead means better outcomes later. The power of planning is never more evident than when mapping a long-term strategy to support your family, finances, and legacy. At Nowling Law, LLC, Scott Nowling and his team can create clear and effective estate plans to safeguard your assets. A Naperville estate planning lawyer can also minimize probate issues and make sure your final wishes are carried out.
Nowling Law, LLC, has built a sterling reputation throughout Naperville and the greater Chicagoland area, with over 160 positive Google reviews. We help clients build comprehensive and fully customized estate plans that meet their exact needs, using tools like wills, transfer on death instruments (TODI), and trusts. This includes clients with unique assets, complex goals, and contentious family situations.
We have the experience and legal acumen to build a successful, legally sound solution to even the most challenging Illinois estate planning scenarios. Our firm is built to ensure long-term stability, meaning we can handle your estate plan far into the future.
Our approach to estate planning is built on a foundation of compassion for our clients, dedication to our legal craft, and a penchant for approaching estate planning in a straightforward and honest way. These principles help our clients be engaged with every step of the process, and they understand exactly what we’re doing and why. At Nowling Law, LLC, we define our success through each individual client’s satisfaction, not by the number of estate planning cases we take on.
Why You Should Hire an Estate Planning Lawyer in Naperville, IL?
Some people believe they are capable of properly drafting and filing their own last will and testament after doing a bit of research. What they fail to realize, however, is that a last will and testament alone isn’t a comprehensive estate plan. It can’t safeguard your assets, support your family over the long term, and sidestep the most tedious parts of the Illinois probate court process.
In fact, estate planning is about much more than just filing documents. It involves selecting and implementing the ideal legal and financial instruments to protect the people you love and uphold the legacy you’ve spent your life building. Without a proper estate plan in place, Illinois law will determine how your remaining assets are distributed by way of a lengthy probate court process, which may not reflect your wishes.
By working with a Naperville estate planning attorney from Nowling Law, LLC, you can:
- Save your family the time, cost, and emotional investment of the probate process.
- Avoid unnecessary delays in distributing your estate’s remaining assets in accordance with your final wishes.
- Implement critical directives to be consulted if you become medically incapacitated.
- Create powerful trusts that can start safeguarding, maximizing, and distributing your assets on whatever timeline you see fit, whether that means after your passing or starting right now.
- Name trusted guardians for minor children.
- Transfer business assets to partners or heirs in accordance with your long-term business strategies.
- Make sure your real estate, family heirlooms, and other unique assets pass smoothly to your designated beneficiaries.
- Reassure yourself in knowing that you have a comprehensive and effective plan in place.
We know that estate planning can be a time-consuming and emotionally complicated process. Nowling Law, LLC, can work closely with you and your family to determine the right estate plan to meet your needs and goals. We can then handle all the detail-oriented legal work necessary to create and implement it. That way, you can focus on the things that matter most to you.
Naperville Estate Planning Options Available Through Nowling Law, LLC
A truly comprehensive estate plan is more than just your last will and testament. A variety of legal and financial strategies may be involved in building the perfect estate plan, depending on the circumstances at hand. At Nowling Law, LLC, some of the robust and flexible tools our Naperville estate planning attorneys offer our clients include:
Revocable Living Trusts
The median income in Naperville is $152,181, which is nearly twice the average for Illinois. That’s why a revocable living trust is a key piece in many Naperville, IL, estate plans. In fact, many high-value estates will put a large percentage of their wealth into one of these powerful and flexible trusts.
A revocable living trust is a uniquely powerful tool because it is, in a sense, both a financial instrument (like a bank account) and a legal instrument (like a contract). In fact, trusts are their own distinct legal entities (almost like a corporation) rather than merely another legal tool. Once assets are placed in trust, they legally “belong” to that trust, and they are no longer part of your personal estate. This lets them completely bypass the probate process upon your passing.
Your Nowling Law, LLC, Naperville estate planning lawyer can help you accomplish the following through a revocable living trust:
- Retain tight control of your assets during your lifetime, even after they have been removed from your personal estate and placed in a trust.
- Avoid the probate process, saving your family time and stress. In many cases, this also reduces the financial burden on your estate.
- Modify or revoke your trust as needed whenever circumstances change.
- Keep your estate and inheritance matters more private.
- Create complex distribution plans so your money goes exactly where you want it, when you want it, even if you are no longer around to see to it yourself.
- Streamline asset transfers, thus reducing financial and emotional burdens on heirs and business partners.
With the right trust in place, you gain tremendous ability to manage your legacy exactly the way you want.
Transfer on Death Instruments (TODIs)
If you own real estate in Naperville or elsewhere, a Transfer on Death Instrument, or TODI, can be a much more efficient and cost-effective way to pass your property on to your chosen beneficiaries than the probate court system. A TODI allows you to:
- Maintain full ownership and control of the property during your lifetime.
- Name your beneficiaries; you get to decide exactly who receives exactly what property when you pass.
- Ensure a smooth transfer of real estate that minimizes stress and financial burdens for the parties involved.
In Illinois, TODIs have become extremely popular estate planning tools for those who wish to simplify matters for their loved ones. It can also avoid the lengthy delays so often associated with probate court.
Last Will and Testament
Estate planning is about much more than simply writing a will, but having a good will is still important. In reality, the only reason so many people think a last will and testament is synonymous with an estate plan is because the former is such a critical and foundational aspect of the latter. Getting a qualified lawyer to help you draft and file a will ensures that:
- Unique assets that are not easily included in a trust or covered by a TODI can be properly distributed per your wishes.
- You, not the probate court, get to decide who manages the final affairs of your estate.
- Guardianship arrangements and other crucial instructions relating to your minor children are clearly established in writing, in a legally binding document.
Without a will, Illinois estate planning laws (specifically, intestacy laws) will go into effect, determine how your estate’s final business is conducted, and, ultimately, decide how your remaining assets are distributed. A will offers you and your loved ones clarity today and protection tomorrow.
Contact a Naperville Estate Planning Lawyer at Nowling Law, LLC Today
If you need help establishing an airtight estate plan in the Naperville area, the team at Nowling Law, LLC, would be happy to help. Reach out at your earliest convenience to set up a confidential consultation. At our office, you can tell us about your situation and learn a bit more about our services.
Client Success Stories
Hiring a lawyer can be a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. From the moment you contact our firm, through the final resolution of your matter, our goal is to make the process easy and understandable.