If you are buying a home or other real estate, your attorney will have asked you how you want to take title. If she didn’t, or if she did and you didn’t know how to answer her, don’t worry. In that case, she will have asked you other questions to determine how you should take title. Example of some of these questions would be: Are you married? Is your spouse going to be on the deed with you? Will you be living in this property? How is your co-buyer related to you? What do you want to happen to your ownership in the property when you die? This information will help your attorney determine what the best type of tenancy is for you. Assuming you are not taking title in the name of a company, there are essentially four ways to take title in real estate in Illinois. The information… read more →
If you are reading this post, you’re probably thinking about what will happen to your assets when you die. Really, you should stop wondering and pick up the phone. Call your attorney. Set up a proper estate plan — whatever that may be for you. It could be as easy as a simple will or as complicated as a complex trust. There is no substitute for good advice and well-drafted documentation. But if you are not ready to commit to estate planning yet, at least you should be aware of what will happen to your estate if you don’t do anything. The bottom line is, anything that is not transferred through beneficiary or co-ownership designations will be transferred to your heirs-at-law. So who are your heirs-at-law in Illinois? If you’re married and you have no children, your heir-at-law is your spouse. If you’re married and you have children, your heirs-at-law… read more →
Every summer in Cook County, we get our second installment property tax bill for the prior year. This June, for example, we’re expecting the bill for the second half of last year. The bills tend to go up a bit each year, but every three years, you open that envelope and recoil. How could your taxes go up so much? After all, the last two years they hardly increased at all! Did they find a platinum mine under your house? Unfortunately, no. There’s no platinum mine, nor have you struck gold or oil. You’ve just been struck by the triennial reassessment. The Cook County Assessor’s office has divided Cook County into thirds, and each year, one-third of the county is reassessed. One year, the Cook County Assessor’s office reassesses all properties in the City of Chicago. The next year they reassess the north and northwest suburbs. And the year after… read more →
Will the woes of landlords never cease? It has been a difficult year for everyone, and residential landlords are in no better shape than anyone else, particularly when their tenants are not paying rent. Since March of 2020, the governor has issued a number of orders staying evictions. The latest of these orders, issued early this month, extends the eviction moratorium through May 1, 2021. To determine if a tenant can be evicted, there is a four-part test. If the tenant cannot answer yes to each part, he can be evicted: Part One: a. Did the tenant earn no more than $99,000 in annual income in 2020 (or no more than $198,000 if filing jointly)? OR b. Was the tenant not required to report any income in 2019 to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service? OR c. Did the tenant receive an Economic Impact Payment pursuant to Section 2001 of the… read more →
We all know Illinois is bleeding residents. With our high taxes and high cost of living, residents are fleeing. So it’s not unusual that Illinois is trying to be creative to bring people back in. The Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) has developed the SmartBuy program, which not only provides a loan of $5,000 for closing costs, but also helps pay off student loans. And the state isn’t just paying off small amounts of student loan debt, either. They are paying off up to $40,000 of debt, or 15% of the purchase price of the home, whichever is less. If the student buys a home for $266,700 or more, they would get the full $40,000 in student debt relief. What do you need to know? Here’s a simple list: There are income and purchase price limits, which you can find here. For example, if you live in the Chicago area,… read more →