Practitioners and title industry unite to iron out new TODI law
On January 1, a statute went into effect giving Illinois estate planners a new tool for helping clients transfer assets at the time of death without going through probate court.
The statute remains a work in progress, according to one estate-planning attorney who helped draft the bill, but practitioners are working together with members of the title industry to iron out the wrinkles so the law will become easier to use for attorneys, clients, and the title companies that help facilitate transfers of real property. Find out more in the April Illinois Bar Journal.
Member Comments (1)
This concept is an attempted short cut to establishing an estate plan and concerns me. The main motivation seems to be to save the consumer the cost of an estate plan.
What happens if the named beneficiary becomes an incompetent and the grantor does not attend to amending his/her deed? What if the beneficiary dies and the grantor does not attend to amending his/her deed? What if the beneficiary does not do "right" by his/her siblings and the grantor anticipated when naming the beneficiary "for convenience?" These are just a few examples of how this method of estate planning can and most certainly will cause more problems than it is intended to resolve.
Sometimes consumer protection is not only about saving money. It is hard for me to understand how this affords greater protection to the grantor than the establishment of a living trust or land trust.