Schedule a consultation with a Naperville estate planning attorney backed by 16 years of experience and over two decades in practice.
If you need to put an estate plan together in Naperville, or if changes in your life have made an older plan unreliable, the legal questions involved deserve serious attention. Illinois has default rules that govern what happens to your property and your dependents when you die without documents in place. Those statutory defaults rarely reflect what the person would have actually wanted, and they hand decision-making authority to a probate court that knows nothing about your family.
Madden Law LLC has spent 16 years handling estate planning for families, individuals, and business owners across DuPage County and the western suburbs. Our Naperville, IL estate planning lawyer can sit down with you, review your situation, and tell you exactly which documents you need and which ones you don't. We offer free consultations for all estate planning matters.
Naperville, IL Estate Planning Lawyer
An estate planning attorney prepares the legal documents that control what happens to your assets, your finances, and your dependents after you die or become unable to make decisions. Wills, trusts, powers of attorney, healthcare directives, beneficiary designations. Each one does a different job, and the vast majority of adults need more than one of them.
The point is not to generate a stack of legal paperwork. A good estate plan keeps your family out of DuPage County probate court, prevents arguments about who was supposed to get what, and makes sure someone you actually trust is making decisions on your behalf if you can't. What belongs in your plan depends on whether you're a single parent with young kids, a married couple splitting time between two states, a small business owner, or a retiree with a pension and a paid-off house. An estate planning lawyer in Naperville who works in this area regularly can sort through those specifics with you.
Types of Estate Planning Cases We Handle in Naperville
Every estate plan starts with a conversation. We need to understand what you own, who depends on you, and what keeps you up at night. From there, the combination of documents we recommend gets shaped around your actual life. We help Naperville families and business owners with the following:
- Wills. A will tells the court who gets your property, who runs the estate, and who raises your minor children. Dying without one in Illinois means the state's intestacy statute decides all of that. We write wills for simple situations and for more complicated ones involving blended families, significant assets, and children who need protection beyond a straightforward inheritance.
- Trusts. A trust holds your assets and distributes them on your terms. In many cases, it lets your family skip probate entirely. Revocable living trusts give you full control while you're alive. Irrevocable trusts sacrifice that control in exchange for creditor protection, tax reduction, or Medicaid planning. Which one fits depends on what you're trying to solve.
- Powers of attorney. These documents name someone to manage your money or make healthcare calls if you're incapacitated. Illinois changed its POA requirements in recent years, so if you signed yours a while back, there's a decent chance it needs updating. We prepare both the property and healthcare versions.
- Living wills and advance directives. A living will documents your wishes about ventilators, feeding tubes, and resuscitation. It puts those decisions in writing so your family does not have to guess. Doctors get clear instructions. Everyone involved gets at least some relief from the weight of those choices.
- Trust administration. The person named as successor trustee after a death takes on a set of fiduciary obligations that most people have never dealt with before. Inventories, beneficiary notices, creditor payments, tax returns, property distributions. We guide trustees through each one of those requirements so they don't end up personally on the hook for something they missed.
- Probate. When there's no trust, or when property wasn't properly funded into the trust before the owner died, the estate goes through DuPage County probate court. We represent executors, administrators, and beneficiaries through the filings, the creditor notice periods, hearings, and final accounting.
- Guardianship designations. Naming a guardian for your children may be the single most consequential decision in your entire estate plan. We also help parents set up trusts that hold money for minors so a teenager doesn't inherit a six-figure sum the day they turn 18.
- Business succession planning. Your estate plan and your business plan overlap more than you might think. What happens to the company if you die? What if you're disabled for a year? What if you just want to retire? We coordinate buy-sell agreements, operating agreement provisions, and ownership transfers with the rest of the estate plan so the pieces fit together.
Why Choose Madden Law LLC as my Estate Planning Lawyer in Naperville, IL?
A Legal Career That Started Long Before This Firm
David Madden practiced for more than two decades before he opened Madden Law LLC in 2025. The early part of his career was spent at national and regional firms, where he represented corporations and high-net-worth individuals in matters involving complex asset arrangements, commercial litigation, and financial planning. That kind of background comes through in estate planning, especially when a client's situation touches business ownership, property in more than one state, or trust structures that carry tax consequences.
David graduated from DePaul College of Law with a Juris Doctor and a Certificate in Intellectual Property Law. He earned his undergraduate degree in Political Science and Public Policy from Michigan State University. He's admitted to practice in Illinois and Michigan, plus the Northern and Central Districts of Illinois and the Eastern District of Wisconsin. His memberships include the American Bar Association, the Illinois State Bar Association, and the DuPage County Bar Association. He also carries a Certified Information Privacy Professional credential through the IAPP, which is relevant when estate plans involve digital assets, sensitive financial records, or privacy concerns tied to trust structures.
Service Across DuPage County and the Western Suburbs
We've worked with Naperville families on plans ranging from first-time wills for young parents to multi-document trust packages for retirees and business owners getting ready to transition out. Our clients appreciate the firm's clear and thorough approach. David is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps Reserve. He served as an infantry Corporal and received an honorable discharge in 2003. He currently sits on the Woodridge School District 68 Board of Education and lives in the Chicago suburbs with his wife and three children. All estate planning consultations are free.
What Is Important to Understand About Estate Planning Cases?
Key Estate Planning Documents and What They Accomplish
A complete estate plan usually involves several documents, and no single one covers everything. Leaving one out can open a gap your family won't discover until it's too late to fix. Here is what the core documents do:
- Last will and testament. Names your beneficiaries, appoints an executor to manage the estate, and designates a guardian for minor children. Goes through probate.
- Revocable living trust. Holds and manages your assets during your lifetime. After your death, property in the trust passes to beneficiaries without a probate filing in most situations.
- Durable power of attorney for property. Gives your chosen agent authority to handle bank accounts, investments, bills, and other financial matters if you can't do it yourself.
- Healthcare power of attorney. Gives your chosen agent authority to make medical decisions when you are unable to speak for yourself.
- Living will. Spells out your preferences on life-sustaining treatment. Ventilators, feeding tubes, resuscitation. Removes the guesswork from your family and your medical providers.
- Beneficiary designations. These apply to retirement accounts, life insurance, and payable-on-death accounts. They pass outside the will and trust entirely and will override whatever those documents say if there is a conflict.
What Are Important Aspects of an Estate Planning Case?
Having documents signed is only part of the job. Several practical things outside the drafting itself determine whether your plan actually holds up when your family needs it:
- Fiduciary selection. The executor, trustee, and agents you name carry real legal responsibilities. Choosing someone who isn't organized, isn't financially capable, or lives across the country from your family can turn a simple administration into a drawn-out mess.
- Beneficiary designation hygiene. A 401(k) or life insurance policy pays whoever is on the beneficiary form. Period. If you got divorced ten years ago and never updated the form, your ex-spouse may still be listed. That designation overrides your will and your trust.
- Trust funding. If you set up a revocable living trust but never retitle your house, your brokerage account, and your bank accounts into the trust's name, those assets still go through probate. The trust is just an empty shell until it actually holds property.
- Periodic review. We generally recommend revisiting your plan every three to five years, or sooner if something major changes. A new marriage, a new child, a move, a change in tax law. Any of these can make the documents you signed five years ago work against what you'd want today.
What Is the Estate Planning Case Timeline?
How long the process takes depends on your estate's complexity and how quickly you can pull together the background information we need. Here's a rough sense of the stages:
- First meeting runs about one to two hours. We go through your assets, your family picture, and your goals. By the end, we've usually identified which documents you need and what structure fits.
- Drafting takes one to three weeks. We prepare wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and any other documents that came out of the initial discussion.
- You review the drafts over the following week or two. We answer questions, make revisions, and finalize everything.
- Signing happens in a single meeting. Documents are executed with witnesses and notarization, as required under Illinois law.
- Trust funding, when applicable, stretches the longest. Retitling real estate, updating bank and brokerage accounts, coordinating with insurance carriers and retirement plan custodians. This phase can take several weeks depending on how many institutions are in the mix.
What Should You Bring to Your Estate Planning Consultation?
Walking in with some basic information makes the first meeting far more productive than starting from zero. Whether you are writing a will for the first time or reworking an older plan that no longer fits, gather what you can from this list:
- A rundown of your major assets with approximate values: real estate, bank accounts, retirement accounts, investment accounts, and life insurance
- Names and relationships of everyone you want to receive something from your estate
- Names of anyone you would consider appointing as executor, trustee, guardian, or agent under a power of attorney
- Copies of any wills, trusts, or powers of attorney you've previously signed
If you're missing some of this, come anyway. The whole point of the consultation is to figure out where things stand and what needs to happen next.
What Are Important Illinois Legal Resources for Estate Planning Cases?
Illinois estate planning law pulls from state statutes, DuPage County court procedures, and federal tax rules. All of it changes from time to time. These public resources can help you look into current rules on your own:
- The Illinois General Assembly publishes the complete text of Illinois statutes, including provisions covering wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and probate.
- The Illinois Courts website has self-help guides, standardized forms, and procedural information for probate and estate proceedings in state courts.
- The Internal Revenue Service publishes federal estate and gift tax thresholds and filing rules that affect how estates and trusts are structured.
- The IRS also maintains guidance on fiduciary income tax obligations for trustees and executors who need to file on behalf of a trust or estate.
- The Social Security Administration maintains information about survivor benefits that families should be aware of during estate administration.
Reach Out to Madden Law LLC to Schedule a Consultation
If your estate plan is incomplete, out of date, or doesn't exist yet, a conversation with our firm is the right next step. Madden Law LLC offers free consultations for all estate planning matters in Naperville, IL. Contact us to schedule a time that works for your calendar.