Your People, Your Legacy: Using Estate Planning to Protect Your Chosen Family

Family is not always found in the place you were born into. Sometimes, often the best times, it's built. It's the friends who showed up when your biological family didn't. The chosen sister who held your hand through heartbreak and celebration. The community that became your anchor before the law recognized your relationship, your identity, or your right to exist exactly as you are.

For LGBTQ+ individuals especially, chosen family isn't a sentimental concept. It is survival infrastructure. And yet, under Illinois law, as in most states, your chosen family has no automatic legal claim to anything you leave behind. Without deliberate estate planning, the law will hand your legacy to people who may have rejected you, and leave the people who loved you with nothing. That ends when you sign your name on the right documents.

Who Chosen Family Is, and Why It Matters So Much

For those unfamiliar, chosen family refers to the people you select, outside of biology or legal marriage, to be your family in every meaningful sense. For many LGBTQ+ people, this network is not supplemental. It is the very fabric of their ability to succeed and overcome adversity.

Older LGBTQ+ adults built these networks out of necessity. During the AIDS crisis, chosen family organized care, sat vigils, and handled affairs when biological families refused. For decades before marriage equality, these were the people who acted as spouses, caretakers, and next of kin, without a single legal protection to back that role up.

Younger LGBTQ+ people face a different but familiar landscape. Roughly 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ+, many because their families of origin refused to accept their identity. Estrangement is not a dramatic exception. It is a common reality. When those connections break, chosen family steps in. These bonds are real, deep, and irreplaceable. But love does not create legal rights. Only paperwork does.

What Happens If You Do Nothing: Illinois Intestacy Law

If you die without a will in Illinois, the state distributes your assets according to the Illinois Probate Act's intestacy rules, a rigid hierarchy that prioritizes biological and legal family regardless of the actual relationships in your life. The order goes: spouse, then children, then parents, then siblings, then more distant relatives. If you are unmarried and childless, your entire estate passes to your parents. If your parents are deceased, it goes to your siblings. A biological relative you haven't spoken to in twenty years will inherit before the best friend who has been by your side for every one of them. Your chosen family, no matter how close, how long, how real, receives nothing. Not legally. Not automatically. Ever.

The Tools That Change Everything

Estate planning puts you in control. Here are the instruments that actually work:

• A Last Will and Testament is your foundational document. In Illinois, you must be at least 18, of sound mind, and sign before two witnesses. Your will names your beneficiaries, the people who receive your property, and your executor, who manages the process. You can leave specific items to specific people, divide your estate in percentages, or structure it however reflects your actual life. A will goes through probate (a court-supervised process), but it is legally binding and far better than nothing.

• A Revocable Living Trust is often the more powerful tool. You transfer assets into the trust during your lifetime, naming yourself as trustee and your chosen family as successor trustees and beneficiaries. When you die, assets pass directly to your beneficiaries, with no probate, no court, no public record, and far less opportunity for a hostile relative to interfere. Trusts are especially valuable when privacy matters or when family conflict is anticipated.

• Beneficiary Designations bypass your will entirely. Retirement accounts (IRAs, 401(k)s), life insurance policies, and payable-on-death bank accounts all transfer directly to whoever you name as beneficiary, regardless of what your will says. Review every account you own and name your chosen family members explicitly. This is one of the most immediate and powerful things you can do today.

• Transfer-on-Death (TOD) Deeds are available in Illinois and are a remarkable tool for homeowners. An Illinois TOD deed lets you name a beneficiary who automatically receives your real property when you die, with no probate and no trust required. The deed is recorded during your lifetime but takes effect only at death, and you retain full control of the property until then. For many people, their home is their most significant asset. A TOD deed ensures it goes exactly where you want it to go.

  
  

Removing Hostile Relatives Under Illinois Law

Illinois law does not require you to leave anything to adult children or other relatives (a surviving spouse has separate rights under the spousal elective share, which is worth discussing with an attorney if you are legally married). You can disinherit any family member, but how you do it matters.

Do not simply omit a person from your will. Silence invites ambiguity and legal challenge. Instead, name them explicitly and state that you are intentionally leaving them nothing. A brief, clear clause, is far harder to contest than an unexplained absence. Pair this with a revocable trust, because trust assets do not go through probate and are harder to challenge than a will. The fewer assets that pass through your will, the less exposure you have to interference.

Reducing the Risk of a Will Contest

A will contest is when someone challenges your will's validity, typically arguing you lacked mental capacity or were under "undue influence." Estranged relatives with nothing to lose sometimes try this. Here's how to reduce that risk:

1. Work with a licensed estate planning attorney (such as those with the Law Office of Andrew J. Mertzenich). A professionally drafted will is harder to challenge than a DIY document. Have your attorney note, in a memo kept with your file, that you appeared competent and were not under any pressure when you signed.

2. Include a no-contest clause (an "in terrorem" clause), which disinherits any beneficiary who unsuccessfully contests the will. Illinois courts enforce these so long as a will is valid.

3. Consider a brief video recording at signing, not legally required, but powerfully effective evidence of your mental clarity and free will.

4. Keep your documents current. An outdated will from a decade ago looks more vulnerable than one recently reviewed and affirmed.

Your Legacy Belongs to the People Who Showed Up

Estate planning is not morbid. It is an act of love, the last, lasting way to tell the people who built a life with you that they mattered. That the friendship, the care, the holidays, the hard years, all of it counted. Your chosen family showed up for you. Estate planning is how you show up for them.

This post is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. If you are ready to protect your chosen family, The Law Office of Andrew J. Mertzenich is here to help. Visit www.MertzenichLaw.com to learn more or get in touch to discuss your estate planning needs with an attorney who understands what chosen family means.