Chicago Business Attorney Blog
Most parents who put off estate planning aren’t avoiding the hard emotional part, thinking about their own mortality. They’re avoiding it because it feels like a project for someday, something to handle once things settle down. The problem is that the mistakes parents make in this area rarely show up as a single dramatic failure. They show up quietly, in documents that were never created, or created once and never updated, and the family only discovers the gap when it’s already too late to fix it the easy way.
Here are the mistakes I see most often, and what actually protects your kids instead.
1. Not Naming a Guardian for Your Minor Children
This is the mistake with the highest stakes and, somehow, the one parents put off longest. If something happens to you and no guardian has been legally nominated, a court decides who raises your children, based on what a judge believes is in their best interest, not based on what you would have chosen.
In Illinois, courts do consider your wishes when appointing a guardian, but only if those wishes are written down in a valid will or another properly signed document. A conversation with a family member, or an assumption that “everyone knows” who would take the kids, carries no legal weight at all. If you have not formally nominated a guardian, you are leaving one of the most important decisions of your children’s lives to a judge who has never met them.
2. Leaving Money or Property Directly to a Minor Without a Trust
This mistake is less obvious, and I see it constantly even among parents who did think to name a guardian. Under Illinois law, minors cannot legally manage inherited money or property on their own. If your estate plan leaves assets directly to a child instead of into a trust, the court has to appoint a property guardian to manage those funds, and here’s the part that catches families off guard: once that child turns 18, they receive everything outright, in full, with no conditions or guidance attached.
Think about what that actually means. An 18 year old, regardless of maturity, financial literacy, or life circumstances, suddenly controls the full amount, all at once. A trust lets you decide how and when your children actually receive what you leave them, whether that’s staggered distributions at 25, 30, and 35, or funds released specifically for education and healthcare needs along the way. It is one of the simplest tools available and one of the most commonly skipped.
3. Naming the Same Person as Both Guardian and Trustee Without Thinking It Through
Parents often default to naming one trusted person to handle everything, the person who would raise the kids also manages the money. It’s an understandable instinct, but the person best suited to raising your children day to day is not always the person best suited to managing significant assets responsibly.
Illinois lets you separate these roles entirely. A guardian handles the parenting, the daily decisions, the home life. A trustee manages the money according to the terms you set. Keeping these separate creates a natural check, since the trustee is bound to the instructions you wrote rather than making unilateral decisions, and it means you’re not forced to choose one person who has to be excellent at two very different jobs.
4. Letting Beneficiary Designations Go Stale
This is the mistake that undoes an otherwise well built estate plan, and it happens because most people don’t realize how much power these designations actually hold. hyperlink Beneficiary designations on life insurance policies, retirement accounts, and payable-on-death accounts override whatever your will says full stop. If your will says one thing and your 401k beneficiary form says another, the beneficiary form wins.
I regularly see accounts that still list a former spouse, a relative who has since passed away, or a minor child with no adult custodian named to actually receive the funds on their behalf. If the listed beneficiary has died and there’s no contingent beneficiary named, the account can revert to your estate entirely, triggering exactly the probate process you may have built your plan specifically to avoid. Every account with a beneficiary designation needs to be reviewed after every major life event, not just set once and forgotten.
5. Assuming Stepchildren Are Automatically Included
Blended families run into this one often, and it can be genuinely painful when a family discovers it too late. Stepchildren who have not been legally adopted do not inherit automatically under Illinois law, regardless of how long you’ve raised them or how much a part of your family they are. If you want a stepchild to inherit, or to be treated the same as your biological or adopted children in any way, your estate plan has to say so explicitly. Nothing about the relationship itself creates that right under the law.
The Bottom Line
None of these mistakes require complicated fixes. A guardian nomination, a properly structured trust, thoughtfully separated roles, updated beneficiary forms, and explicit language for blended families, together these close nearly every gap that turns into a painful surprise for families later. The hard part was never the paperwork. It’s making the time to sit down and do it before life forces the question at the worst possible moment.
About Tracy Ries
Tracy Ries is an estate planning and probate attorney at Bellas & Wachowski in Chicago, where she helps parents build estate plans that actually reflect how they want their children cared for and provided for, not just plans that check a legal box. From guardian nominations to trust structures that protect kids from receiving everything at once, Tracy works with families to close the gaps that most parents don’t realize exist until it’s too late. If your estate plan hasn’t been reviewed since your children were born, or in several years, schedule a consultation with Tracy Ries today at 800.825.9260 or visit bellas-wachowski.com.