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 ones affairs. We also help people to preplan as they age using wills, trusts, guardianships. We’re here to help. Today, 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 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 of the actual short term guardianship form itself so that you can fill this out at home once again if you’re sick this allows you to be able to sign 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 right here on this first slide is our contact information. So should you want to reach out to us? Do 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 a estateandprobatelegalgroup.com. So this first section deals with the parent or guardian of 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.
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 just kind of get started to get right into this form and basically going to take you step by step 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. 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 child, children who aren’t born yet, as it specifically provides for a child likely to be to be born. And it just asks that you include the child’s expected date of birth. So so your due date.
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 use one of your children. You’re not going to be able to put all three of them on one for.
Then the second part is, now that you’ve already identified who you are and who you’re your child or children are, if you’re using multiple forms, is in this part, you identify the Guardian, 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, and that’s in order to make it match up as much as possible. One of the main purposes of this form is allowing the short term guardian to interact with you, with the schools, with police, with with whoever else, health care 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 I.D. Same with the address. So don’t put any type of nicknames or or pet names or anything like that. Put their full name as as it shows up on their their driver’s license. One of the more flexible areas of the form, 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. We are no longer able to make day to day child care decisions regarding your child on these first two. Here are basically effective dates that are either determined by you at the time. If you’re able to write out a you know, you have to determine that for whatever reason, you’re unable to make a day to day child care decisions. You can state separately that you want the short term guardianship to take effect. 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 child care 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 it’s know there’s a separate physician that due to whatever reason you’re unable to make those decisions, they have to make that certification.
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 health care institution. So this takes effect automatically. When that happens, there isn’t any need for any other signed written statement by either you were a doctor and 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 when your 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 an 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 a there’s other there’s a catch all 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 when that situation takes place. And 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 situations, such as you being admitted to the hospital, it can only last three hundred and sixty five days after that.
The only instance, I think, where it would be more would be if it were military members.
Correct. If if there’s active duty service that extends over a year, the effective date and 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.
The other ideas with this termination clause, you can have success of 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.
Right now, as you’ll see, it kind of mirrors those effective dates, just flips them around basically, where, you know, as we saw in the effective date, it’s the first one. Was that a statement that you signed then you’ll see in this next section termination? It’s just the flip of that.
And the important thing is if you do not fill out this paragraph in 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. 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 there, the child was born in wedlock and I would have both parents sign this part of paragraph five.
And this section is for witnesses, as you’ll note, this form requires two witnesses, the witnesses cannot 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 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.
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 their driver’s license with the current address and contact information on that form.
And this is the acceptance, all 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 witness the when the witnesses are there, what eventually before this form to take effect, it does need to be signed by the person that you’re appointing. 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 other specific things that you want to have happen that you want them to keep in mind in the hopefully the the event that they need to use the short term guardianship and start taking care of your child.
And in 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 they’re built right in the statute can include basically kind of the more obvious ones when the other child’s parent, the child’s other parent, has died, where the whereabouts of the child’s other parent are not known, and where the child’s other parent is not willing or able to make and carry out day to day child care decisions concerning the child. So those are circumstances where the 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.
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 time 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 at 630-800 0112. And we’ll see you soon. Thank you, everybody.
