Barry A. Kozak

We can help families to traverse life's final ROAD with independence, dignity, purpose and autonomy. As your attorney, we can draft documents and protect your legal rights. As your counselor, we can contact other professionals who can help to keep you healthy, financially sound, and living in the right environment.

We can help individuals and couples to maximize the use of their real, personal and intangible assets during life, and to protect them from undesired creditors and to minimize taxes during life, and at least through the next generation of their heirs.

We can help individuals line up their surrogate decision makers, agents, and fiduciaries. Illinois allows individuals to make all decisions over their property and health, as long as they are adults and have the requisite level of mental capacity. Illinois also allows all such individuals to prepare contracts and directives expressing who will make decisions, and how they will be made, if later in life that principal's mental capacity diminishes below the necessary level.

We can help individuals plan for their end of lives. As any Illinois resident dies, the appropriate probate court in the county will decide who will take ownership of the decadent's real, personal or intangible property. The question is whether the decedent properly executed a will clearly expressing how property should be distributed, or if the State's default intestate rules will govern.