Oak Park Real Estate & Estate Planning Blog

When you are getting ready to work with an Oak Park estate planning attorney to make an estate plan, you should be thinking about a wide range of document types and estate planning tools that may be relevant to you. For most people, advance directives fall into this category — they are an important part of the estate planning process. Yet unlike wills or trusts — which most people have heard of, even if they do not have a will themselves or have any personal connection to a trust — many people do not know about advance directives or what they do. As such, when you first hear about advance directives, you might be wondering: do I need to have one, and do I need more than one? For most people, it is important not only to have at least one advance directive but to have multiple advance directives. Indeed, advance directives are important regardless of your current health because they can give you peace of mind concerning your health care no matter what unexpected events might occur. Our ...

Anyone who is working with an estate planning lawyer to make a will or establish a trust should also be thinking carefully about advance directives and their importance to any estate planning process. While many Oak Park residents already know about wills and what they often include and may have a general idea of how trusts work, advance directives are discussed less frequently among families in general. Yet advance directives are extremely important, and they can often provide important benefits not only to the person creating them but also to their loved ones, who can face anxiety and guilt over medical decision-making processes. There are different types of advance directives, and our Oak Park estate planning lawyers can explain how each of them works. What is an Advance Directive? What is an advance directive? Advance directives are documents that deal with a person’s health and their right and ability to make certain decisions about their health care. As the Illinois Department o...