Make your Illinois living trust.

How it works

1. 1

   Answer a few questions

   About your assets, trustees, and beneficiaries.

2. 2

   Download your trust

   A complete, personalized revocable living trust, formatted for Illinois.

3. 3

   Sign and fund

   Sign the trust. Fund it by transferring assets into its name (notarization strongly recommended if real estate is involved).

Joint or individual

Married couples can make one joint Illinois living trust that both spouses sign, in place of an individual one. The questionnaire asks which you want, and Will.com generates either.

Signing a Illinois living trust

No formal execution requirements beyond settlor signature; notarization strongly recommended when funding real property

Proving your Illinois trust without handing it over

When a bank, brokerage, title company, insurer, or transfer agent asks to see your trust, Illinois law lets your trustee give them a short certification of trust instead (760 ILCS 3/1013). It states that the trust exists, who the trustee is, and what the trustee may do. It leaves out who inherits and what each person receives, so your beneficiaries stay private.

Will.com generates the Illinois Certification of Trust alongside your trust, built to the contents that section requires. Sign it in front of the same notary, at the same sitting as the trust, then give out copies of the certification rather than the trust itself.

Tenancy by the entirety

Illinois recognizes tenancy by the entirety (Homestead only, and only where the instrument says so. 765 ILCS 1005/1c covers a homestead conveyed by both spouses during marriage or a civil union, including a beneficial interest in a land trust, and a homestead titled in the trustees of the spouses' revocable inter vivos trust where the deed specifically states both spouses' interests are held as tenants by the entirety. No deed, contract for deed, mortgage, or lease of the homestead is effective unless both tenants sign.). It's a form of co-ownership available only to married couples. Neither spouse can convey or encumber the property acting alone, and at the first death it passes to the surviving spouse by survivorship, outside probate. Under 735 ILCS 5/12-112, property held that way is also beyond the reach of a creditor of one spouse alone while both spouses are living. When you transfer such property into a revocable trust, you may lose whatever entireties protection it carries unless your trust is drafted to preserve it.

Funding Illinois real estate into the trust

To transfer Illinois real estate into your trust, you sign a new deed conveying the property from yourself to yourself as trustee, then record the deed with the County Recorder (or, in counties under 60,000 inhabitants, the County Clerk acting as recorder) of the county where the property is located (765 ILCS 5/28, 55 ILCS 5/3-5001). The trust does not control real estate unless the deed transfer is recorded.