Answers

Should I put my house in a trust in Illinois?

By Adam Lysinski, Attorney · Updated May 9, 2026

It depends on your goals. Revocable living trust is comprehensive (avoids probate + addresses incapacity + privacy). Illinois TODI is cheaper but doesn't address incapacity.

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Short answer

It depends on your goals. A revocable living trust avoids probate, addresses incapacity, and provides privacy — at higher upfront cost. An Illinois TODI (Transfer-on-Death Instrument) avoids probate at lower cost but does not address incapacity. The right answer depends on age, asset complexity, family situation, and incapacity-planning needs.

The full picture

Whether to put your house in a trust is one of the most common questions Illinois homeowners ask their estate-planning attorney. The answer depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

Goal: avoid probate at death. A revocable living trust holding the property avoids probate. So does an Illinois Transfer-on-Death Instrument (TODI) recorded during your lifetime. So does joint tenancy with right of survivorship for married couples or co-owners. So does tenancy by the entirety for married couples on the principal residence. Multiple paths exist.

Goal: manage the property if you become incapacitated. A revocable living trust handles this — the successor trustee can manage the property without a court-supervised guardianship if you lose capacity. A TODI does not address incapacity; neither does joint tenancy. For incapacity planning, the trust path is meaningfully better.

Goal: privacy. Probate is a public process; trust administration is not. If you do not want the public record to disclose what you owned and to whom it was distributed, a trust provides privacy that probate does not.

Goal: estate-tax planning. A revocable living trust does not by itself avoid estate tax. Above the Illinois $4M estate-tax threshold or the federal $15M threshold (One Big Beautiful Bill Act), more advanced structures are required: irrevocable trusts, GRATs, SLATs, gifting strategies, valuation discounts. Comprehensive estate planning above the $4M Illinois threshold is scoped at intake.

The pricing tradeoff. A TODI is the cheapest probate-avoidance path for a single Illinois property — one recorded deed. A revocable living trust package starts at $2,000 and includes the trust, pour-over will, financial and healthcare powers of attorney, HIPAA, trust-funding instructions, and one Illinois deed transferring real estate into the trust. Multiple Illinois properties or out-of-state real estate add complexity and cost.

Related questions

Should I put my house in a trust in Illinois?
It depends on your goals. A revocable living trust holding Illinois real estate avoids probate at death, manages the property if you become incapacitated, and provides privacy. The drawback is upfront cost and the requirement to fund the trust by transferring the deed. Alternative: an Illinois Transfer-on-Death Instrument (TODI) recorded with the County Recorder transfers the property at death without probate, at lower upfront cost, but does not address incapacity. The right answer depends on age, asset complexity, family situation, and incapacity-planning needs.
What is the difference between a TODI and a revocable trust?
A TODI (Transfer-on-Death Instrument) is an Illinois-specific deed that transfers a single piece of real estate to named beneficiaries at the owner’s death, recorded with the County Recorder during the owner’s lifetime. It does nothing during incapacity. A revocable living trust holds the property during life, transfers it at death without probate, manages it during incapacity, and can hold non-real-estate assets. TODI is cheaper and simpler; trust is more comprehensive.
Will a trust avoid Illinois estate tax?
No, by itself. A revocable living trust does not avoid Illinois or federal estate tax because the grantor retains full ownership during life. For estate-tax planning above the Illinois $4M threshold or the federal $15M threshold (under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act), more advanced structures are required — irrevocable trusts, GRATs, SLATs, gifting strategies, valuation discounts. Comprehensive estate planning above the $4M Illinois threshold is scoped at intake.
Does my house need to be in a trust to avoid probate?
No — there are at least three Illinois alternatives that avoid probate for real estate without a full trust: (1) joint tenancy with right of survivorship (transfers automatically to the surviving joint tenant), (2) a TODI recorded during the owner’s lifetime, (3) tenancy by the entirety for married couples (Illinois recognizes this for the principal residence). A revocable living trust is one path, not the only path.

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