What if you temporarily unable to take care of your child? The COVID pandemic made us all aware of the need to plan for the unexpected. How do you protect your child if you are unable to care for them for a short time? What if your child needs medical treatment? Parents can choose someone to name a short-term guardian to care for their child for 1 year or less. You might want to legally appoint a short-term guardian to care for your child under the following circumstances:
• military duty
• illness
• extended vacation
• incarceration
In order to serve as a guardian, someone must meet the Illinois qualifications to be a guardian
• at least 18 years old
• of sound mind
• have not been convicted of a serious crime
In this video, guardianship attorneys Mario Godoy and Steve Novak explain the Illinois Short Term Guardianship and how to fill out the form and set up a short-term guardianship from your home.
Transcript
Mario Godoy:
Hey everyone. Thanks for joining us on this video. We are the Estate and Probate Legal Group. We focus on helping our clients through the probate process after someone has passed away, helping them to distribute their loved one’s affairs. We also help people to preplan as they age using wills, trusts, guardianships. We’re here to help today.
Mario Godoy:
We’re going to discuss the Illinois short-term guardianship. This is an excellent form. It allows you to basically set up a guardian for your child and to stop something short of a formal guardianship set up in court. The nice thing about this at these times, because at the time of this filming we’re dealing with the COVID pandemic, is that this is something you can take care of right now at home. We’re going to take you step-by-step through the form and the other benefit of this as well is that if you are on this landing page, go ahead and enter your information on the form and we will send you a copy of the actual short-term guardianship form itself so that you can fill this out at home.
Mario Godoy:
Once again, if you’re sick, this allows you to be able to assign some of your responsibilities to another adult so that your child or your other loved one for whom you have guardianship so that they can be taken care of. With that said, we’re going to hop right in.
Mario Godoy:
Right here on this first slide is our contact information. So should you want to reach out to us, should you have questions on this video or the form itself, we are here to help. Please feel free to reach out to us either by phone or by email, or you can visit us online at estateandprobatelegalgroup.com.
Mario Godoy:
So this first section deals with the parent or guardian and the child. Now, today, we also have my partner, Steve Novak. He focuses exclusively on the guardianships at our firm. So I’m going to have him run through this actual form with you step-by-step and we’re literally taking you through each one of the sections that is on the form that once again, you can get by inputting your information on the form sheet on this landing page.
Steve Novak:
Thanks Mario. As Mario said, my name is Steve Novak. I’m an attorney here at the firm, and we’re going to go ahead and just kind of get started, get right into this form. I’m basically going to take you step-by-step on covering all the different sections and kind of explaining some of the more common scenarios that we see with respect to being able to fill this form out completely.
Steve Novak:
As Mario said, the first part is basically identifying who the various parties are. Some parts of the form will be more self-explanatory than others, but this kind of identifies you, the appointing parent, the name of the child, and basically expressing your desire to appoint a short-term guardian for your child. The important thing to note is that this form can also be used for children who aren’t born yet, as it specifically provides for a child likely to be born and it just asks that you include the child’s expected date of birth, so your due date.
Mario Godoy:
An important thing on this slide as well, just to keep in mind, if you have multiple children, you’re going to need one of these forms or each one of your child. Or each one of your children. You’re not going to be able to put all three of them on one form.
Steve Novak:
And the second part is now that you’ve already identified who you are and who your child or children are, if you’re using multiple forms, is in this part you identify the guardian. You put the name and the address of that person. I think it’s important to use their full name, preferably one that the same name, the same way it’s spelled on their driver’s license or other form of ID. That’s in order to make it match up as much as possible.
Steve Novak:
Kind of one of the main purposes of this form is allowing the short-term guardian to interact with the schools, with police, with whoever else, healthcare providers on behalf of your child. And so if they’re looking for identification as to the fact that the guardian and the person named in the form and the person who’s in front of them match up, it’s important to have their name match up with their ID. Same with the address. So don’t put any type of nicknames or pet names or anything like that. Put their full name as it shows up on their driver’s license.
Steve Novak:
And then one of the more flexible areas of the form that there’s a lot more options to pick from is the effective date. An important thing to note is that a lot of these effective dates basically deal with different scenarios where you’re no longer able to make day-to-day childcare decisions regarding your child. These first two here are basically effective dates that are either determined by you at the time, if you’re able to write out… You have determined there for whatever reason, you’re unable to make a day-to-day childcare decisions, you can state separately that you want the short-term guardianship to take effect.
Steve Novak:
The second one here is with a physician essentially that certifies in writing that you’re no longer able to make or carry out day to day childcare decisions. The issues with these two is it depends on a second document. It depends on either a statement that you sign or a statement that your doctor signs in order for the short-term guardianship to take effect. However, this could provide some flexibility in that it basically, it’s either you’re making the decision or there’s a separate physician that due to whatever reason, you’re unable to make those decisions, they have to make that certification.
Steve Novak:
This next page is just the effective dates continued and you can select one or more of these. And so you don’t need to just pick one. You can pick any that you want to have apply. As you can see at the top, a little more general is just the date that you’re admitted as an inpatient to a hospital or other healthcare institutions. So this takes automatically when that happens. There isn’t any need for any other signed written statement by either you or a doctor. And then you can either pick a specific effective date, maybe you know in advance for whatever reason you’re not going to be able to take care of your child. You can insert an effective date in advance.
Steve Novak:
When you’re active duty, if you’re part of the military, other federal service, you can have an active duty service date that begins that you put in yourself. And then administrative separation is referring to various immigration related types of situations, either some sort of detention or deportation or something like that. And then finally at the bottom there’s other, there’s a catchall. So you can go ahead and craft a certain type of situation or scenario that you feel is important in order to have the effective date begin when that situation takes place.
Steve Novak:
It’s important to note that this only lasts for up to a year. So whatever effective date you have, even if it’s a specific date, even if it’s a more general date, the occurrence of some certain situation such as you being admitted to the hospital, it can only last 365 days after that.
Mario Godoy:
And the only instance, I think, where it would be more would be if it were military members.
Steve Novak:
Correct. If there’s active duty service that extends over a year, the effective date can… the length that the short-term guardianship can last can exceed a year, but it just has to end within 30 days of the end of your active duty service.
Mario Godoy:
And the other idea is with this termination clause, you can have successive short-term guardianship forms that you execute prior. So that’s something that you can set up and once again, that’s something that we could help you with, if this is part of any long-term planning that you may need. And so paragraph four just covers the termination dates or the termination scenarios in this particular case.
Steve Novak:
Right and as you’ll see, it kind of mirrors those effective dates, just flips them around basically where as we saw in the effective date, the first one was that a statement that you sign, then you’ll see in this next section, termination. It’s just the flip of that.
Mario Godoy:
And the important thing is, if you do not fill out this paragraph, and this paragraph is in the forms that we are offering, then this actual appointment will not be effective. So this needs to be filled out.
Mario Godoy:
So paragraph five discusses the date and signature of the appointing parent or guardian. So this is directly from the form itself. You just need to sign it. We’ll discuss in the next section about having witnesses but if it’s two parents that are joined together, the child was born in wedlock I would have both parents sign this part of paragraph five.
Steve Novak:
And this section is for witnesses. As you’ll note here, this form requires two witnesses. The witnesses can not be the guardian itself, can’t serve as a witness and the person who is witnessing has to be over 18, but other than that, it could be anybody else. There’s no other restrictions on who the witnesses can be. It’s just important you have two of them in order for this form to be effective.
Mario Godoy:
And so these witnesses need to watch you sign this form. Now, the person that you’re appointing can sign the form at a different time, but the witnesses need to be there to watch your form be signed. And then we would use their full name as on their driver’s license with their current address and contact information on that form.
Steve Novak:
And this is the acceptance. Unlike a will or a power of attorney or other document, short-term guardianship document doesn’t actually need to be signed, be accepted by the person that you’re appointing. It does not need to be signed on the same day that you as a parent have signed it. So it can be signed on different days. It’s not like they need to be there at the meeting when you’re setting it up and when the witnesses are there. But eventually for this form to take effect, it does need to be signed by the person that you’re appointing.
Steve Novak:
We think that this is also a good time to kind of have a conversation with that person you’re appointing as to your intent in signing this form and other specific things that you want to have happen, that you want them to keep in mind in hopefully the event that they need to use the short-term guardianship and start taking care of your child.
Steve Novak:
And then this last section is if both parents are not appointing parents. So, there’s some sort of separation between the child’s two parents. Is Illinois also requires the consent of the other parent and this is where that person signs to consent. There are some exceptions to that. Those exceptions, and they’re built right into the statute, can include basically kind of the more obvious ones when the child’s other parent has died, where the whereabouts of the child’s other parents are not known, and where the child’s other parent is not willing or able to make and carry out day-to-day childcare decisions concerning the child. So those are circumstances where the consent is not needed of the other parent. However, if none of those apply, then the other parent does need to consent to the appointment.
Mario Godoy:
Well, that’s pretty much the form. We’ve taken you through paragraph by paragraph. Once again, the benefits of this is that a formal guardianship requires going to court. It requires giving up parental rights. This is something short of that. It’s meant to be used in a temporary basis and for the times that we have right now going on with COVID, it’s an excellent, excellent choice for setting up a care plan should you be quarantined or have to go to the hospital. Thanks for watching. Please contact us for a consultation and there’s our contact information. You can reach us by phone (630) 800-0112 and we’ll see you soon.
Steve Novak:
Stay safe everybody.
Putting safeguards in place to protect your child is preparing for the future. Contacting Estate & Probate Legal Group in Lombard Illinois today to discuss how an Illinois Short Term Guardianship can protect your family. If you have any questions about estate planning during the coronavirus pandemic, or if you would like to schedule a free consultation, please call our office at 630-864-5835.
