This is an interesting article:

Many older adults in Cook County die without an estate plan. A newer legal tool is helping heirs hold onto family homes.
By Lizzie Kane
Chicago Tribune
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Published: Nov 28, 2023 at 5:00 am

Kenneth Ratliff’s parents passed away years ago without any estate plan.

Ratliff, 57, said he is struggling to find a pro bono attorney to help him through the probate process — a lengthy and expensive court proceeding that helps heirs gain legal control of their family properties by getting their name on the title. Many attorneys have told him they have a backlog of cases just like his, he said.

Ratliff said he has been doing his best to pay the property tax and utility bills and maintain the brick two-flat his parents bought in 1974. He lives in the Lawndale home with other family members and previously lived there to take care of his parents. But, Ratliff said, he is worried about losing the home and thinks it will need substantial repairs soon.

“It is frustrating trying to find someone who can help,” Ratliff said. “If we lost the property, where would we go? I don’t know.”

Ratliff’s family is not alone. Many heirs in Chicago and across the country are struggling to recover their family homes because their relatives did not have an estate plan when they died, leading to what is called a “tangled title” or “heirs’ property.” But, over the last decade in Cook County, an increasing number of homeowners, particularly older adults, are using transfer on death instruments, or TODIs, a cheaper and simpler estate planning tool.

Illinois passed the Illinois Residential Real Property Transfer on Death Instrument Act to legalize the option for owners of residential properties under five units in 2012.

In order for an owner’s home to be legally passed on to an heir, there needs to be legal documentation detailing who will claim title to the property. In Illinois, this could be in the form of a will, land trust or transfer on death instrument.

If there is a will, the heir still needs to go through the probate process. If there is a land trust — when an organization takes authority over a property while the landowner maintains ownership — the property is typically kept out of probate when the landowner dies and gets passed directly to the designated heir.

Both of these processes are more expensive than a TODI, which also leads to an automatic transfer of ownership (no probate court required) as with a land trust. The document can be found on the Cook County clerk’s website.

When the law passed legalizing TODIs, property owners had to pay $98 to record the document with the Cook County clerk’s office. The Center for Disability & Elder Law worked with the county to introduce an ordinance that temporarily lowered the cost to $50 during the pandemic. Recently, the fee has gone up to $59, still making it the least expensive estate planning option

Just thought this was food for thought. That it was good information to get out.