Kane County Estate Planning Attorneys

Experienced Estate Planning Lawyers in Aurora, Geneva, Champaign, and Throughout Illinois

In order to arrange your affairs to ensure that your assets are properly held and allocated for the benefit of you and your loved ones in the event of a worst case scenario, it is important to have a comprehensive estate plan. Without a plan in place, decisions involving important issues, such as personal care providers, the ultimate distribution of your assets, and for younger parents, guardianship of your minor children, could be decided by the courts. In addition, your estate or your surviving family members could be left with a large estate tax bill that could be readily avoided by proper planning in advance.

At Kinnally Flaherty Krentz Loran Hodge & Masur P.C., we have decades of experience helping Illinois families with all types of estate planning issues. We understand that each client has specific needs and goals based on their unique family dynamics. We put our experience to work to gain an in-depth understanding of your needs and craft a customized solution that maximizes your estate value, minimizes tax liability and ensures that your final wishes are carried out, typically without any need for court intervention.

Regardless of the size or complexity of your estate, we can develop an effective strategy that accounts for all known eventualities, as well as the flexibility to handle the unknown or sometimes unforeseeable events in life.

Estate Planning Services

We handle all aspects of your estate plan, with an eye toward limiting future estate litigation exposure.

• Wills, Powers of Attorney and Living Wills: We structure wills with your specific needs and goals in mind. If you are unavailable or no longer able to handle your affairs, a power of attorney (for financial or healthcare authority) can ensure that your affairs are managed by a trustworthy family member or close friend. Further, when appropriate, we also craft living wills to provide direct guidance to health care providers on future medical decisions should you become incapacitated. The right combination of estate plan documents will provide you with the peace of mind knowing that your wishes have been succinctly expressed in writing and just as importantly, that your wishes will be followed on important matters at critical times when you are unable to express them yourself.
• Trusts: We create living trusts to pass estate assets on to ultimate beneficiaries smoothly without resorting to probate court and with greatest tax savings possible under the circumstances. We create special needs trusts for families that need to protect a disabled beneficiary.
• Complex Trusts: We have extensive experience setting up sophisticated lifetime trust arrangements designed to accomplish a specific purpose. These include but are not limited to: irrevocable life insurance trusts, credit shelter trusts (so-called QTIP Trusts), trusts for minors, charitable lead trusts, charitable remainder trusts, qualified domestic trusts, and donor advised funds utilizing directed custodial accounts established through various private or public foundations.
• Lifetime Gifting Programs: We have been engaged to provide legal advice and drafting of lifetime gift trusts for high net worth clients or clients with specific legal needs for specialized gift trust planning to achieve the transfer of wealth to beneficiaries in the future, while providing for deferral of distribution and asset protection in the interim.

When we develop your estate plan, we give careful consideration to all important factors that may impact you and your loved ones both now and for generations to come. These include:

• Your marital status and children (including second marriage considerations);
• Guardianship designation for minor children of younger parents;
• The extent and nature of the assets within your estate and how best to protect them;
• The identity and relationship of your beneficiaries;
• Disability planning if you have disabled or special needs beneficiaries;
• Estate administration and distribution (including the timing and asset protection implications of beneficiary withdrawal rights);
• Business ownership and business succession planning;
• Contributions to charities; and
• Estate tax consequences.

Other planning objectives that may be expressed during our consultation with you. Your unique situation deserves the attention that only thorough, experienced legal counsel can provide.

Planning an estate can be complicated and should be done with the assistance of a skilled lawyer that takes the time to address all the important factors. For a consultation with one of our experienced estate planning attorneys in DuPage County, contact Kinnally Flaherty Krentz Loran Hodge & Masur P.C. today at 630-907-0909. From our offices in Aurora, we provide counsel and advice for clients with estate planning needs throughout Northern Illinois.