Cornered: Out of Court

Cornered: Essential Caselaw and Legislative Updates for Elder Law Attorneys

• IICLE® • Season 2 • Episode 9

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Staying on top of recent decisions and legislation impacting estate planning, guardianships, and more is essential for elder law attorneys who advise clients and their families on wide-ranging matters. In Illinois, important 2025 developments include the One Big Beautiful Bill, limits to facility liability for negligence, attorney duties for mental capacity determinations, receipt of assets by minor family members, and more. Linda Strohschein and Paula Willuweit of Strohschein Law Group in St. Charles are presenting this year's caselaw and legislative update at the IICLE® Elder Law Short Course, which is at the Chicago Marriott Southwest and via live webcast on September 18 - 19, 2025. The annual reception hosted by the Illinois Chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA-IL) is open to all in-person attendees at no additional cost.

IICLE® is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit based in Springfield, Illinois. We produce a wide range of practice guidance for Illinois attorneys and other legal professionals in all areas of law with the generous contributions of time and expertise from volunteer attorneys, judges, and other legal professionals.

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Oh, you're an attorney. I have a friend who…

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I've been meaning to update my will, but I just bought a new house so I was wondering…

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I want to start a business…

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My brother was fired,

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and I think…

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My friend got divorced awhile back. I just don't understand how her ex…

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You've been there at a social function, meeting friends of friends. Word gets out that you're an attorney, and suddenly your night is filled with partygoers asking you, quote, UN quote, simple legal questions. The questions are seldom in your area. Some of the stuff you haven't thought about since law school.

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You're being cornered out of court.

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In the cornered out of court podcast from IICLE, you'll hear from fellow attorneys about the questions they get and the responses they give to escape being cornered.

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Staying on top of recent decisions and legislation impacting estate planning, guardianships and more is essential for elder law attorneys who advise clients and their families on wide-ranging

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matters. For this reason, the annual caselaw and legislative update at the IICLE Elder Law Short Course is always a highly anticipated session. The Elder Law Short Course is live in person at the Chicago Marriott Southwest and via live webcast on September 18th and 19th, and we're fortunate to have the

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co-presenters of the annual update joining us now.

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Name is Linda Strohschein. I'm the principal of Strohschein Law Group. We have offices in Saint Charles and Arlington Heights. We do estate planning and elder law guardianship, probate administration and probate litigation.

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And I am Paula Willuweit. I also. I'm an attorney at Shoeshine Law Group. And I would say my practice areas there are primarily in the guardianship and probate litigation side of things. So I like to joke all the messy stuff comes to me.

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The annual caselaw and legislative update is always a popular session at the Elder Law Short Course. What are some highlights of this year's update that you think practitioners in this area should be paying close attention to?

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Each year we have an hour to speak. Our goal is to look for roughly 10 to 15 new statutes that's come about 10 to 15 cases. Sometimes that number is a little more skewed one way or the other. For example, during the pandemic that first year 2020, lot of legislation, but not a lot of caselaw.

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Was the courts shut down and then the following year in 21?

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I had first year a lot of cases, little statutes. Next year was hardly no statute or hardly no cases. Lots and lots of statutes. So just interesting. It changes from year to year, but from my perspective and Paul and I have split up the materials this year as we did last year where I'm doing the legislative updates and Paul is doing the caselaw update. So that's made.

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A huge difference for me, so I appreciate that. And I would say on the legislative side, the one big, beautiful bill, it's probably the biggest thing that's going to impact our practices this year.

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Interesting because we've got the timeline of how this bill really comes into play. You know, there's certain things that have happened and will happen different things in 26, 27, 28. So we're going to kind of walk through, walk through all of that.

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Right.

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That have a whole stack in front of me of cases to look at and mention and talk about, but obviously I won't get into all of them right now. There is a Supreme Court case in Illinois Supreme Court case that we're gonna talk about as far as limiting.

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Facility liability for negligence that obviously comes into play a lot with our probate estates and with our older client base and just making sure they know what their options are when our families when a loved one passes. There's also a case that came out of the first appellate district and that really focuses on.

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What duty attorney?

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These have, when they are assessing or not assessing a client's mental capacity and what capacity they have to execute a state planning documents and and what obligations we have to make sure that we're taking appropriate steps when we're making those documents and looking out for our clients.

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And then there's a whole lot of other cases. We've got some minors cases. We've got some, you know, good old fashioned estate fights between family members. I've got a couple of cases that are department benefit specific. And then I even have a divorce case. We're gonna talk about. So.

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Keep you all on your toes, hopefully.

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Elder law attorneys advise clients making sensitive and often difficult decisions about.

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Their families. What do you keep in mind to ensure you're providing your clients excellent legal support?

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Just staying up to date on all of the new things that are coming out, whether that's caselaw, whether that's a statute, whether that's an executive order, whether it's a policy change, just kind of trying to keep a pulse on what's happening around us in this area.

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But then also understanding that our job is to help our clients plan for the unexpected. So making sure that our plans are flexible in nature and have the appropriate language and tools that our clients can use to accommodate for uncertainty and accommodate for unforeseen change is because.

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None of us know what tomorrow brings, so just making sure that the services we're providing are personalized are, you know, the best we can provide at the time, given what we know, but also flexible for the future.

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I would just add really just one thing which is listening to the clients concerns. I know I have to return a clients phone call this afternoon and she just got some bad news and on top of more bad news and she's she's real anxious right now. And so she just wants to hear from me and how can I help her. So really listening to.

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To what the clients trying to tell.

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Us.

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What are you looking forward to about this year's elder law? Short course, and for the future of this long running ICL program?

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The program is really a fantastic 1 and I know that I get a lot of emails in my inbox offering continuing legal education, but I know it calls a good strong player and so I will be Co chair next year so we get a chance to kind of direct the program, just making sure we've got really good dynamic.

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Presentations. Great speaks.

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Again, I know that IICLE puts on a top quality program, so I just want to continue in that regard. As far as this year, I probably am personally really excited about the AI topic. You know, we just we've been taking a deep dive into this in the last last several months trying to figure out how we can best implement AI into our program and.

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Into what we do here. So I'm hoping to learn a couple new nuggets.

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Relative to a lot of people that attend the elderly short course that have been there, you know, year after year, if year I'm a relative newcomer. I just enjoy meeting all the speakers, hearing what everybody has to say. There's always something new to learn for me, which is great.

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Every session that I attend, I feel like there's a negative information, even if it's a session that I feel like, oh, I I know all this. No, I don't. There's always something new. It's just a really great experience.

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Linda Strohschein and Paula Willuweit of Strohschein Law Group in Saint Charles are presenting this year's caselaw and legislative update at the IICLE® Elder Law Short Course, which is at the Chicago Marriott Southwest and via live webcast on September 18th and 19th.

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This year, the annual reception hosted by the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys is open to all in person. Attendees at no additional cost. If you have an idea for a topic you would like to hear discussed on the IICLE podcast, we welcome your suggestions by e-mail. Our address is info, that's info@iicle.com.

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IICLE is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit based in Springfield, IL. We produce a wide range of practice guidance for Illinois attorneys and other legal professionals.

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All areas of the law with the generous contributions of time and expertise from attorneys, judges and other legal professionals.

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If you are interested in our many authorship and speaking opportunities, please give us a call at 217-787-2080 or visit the contributor resource center at IICLE.com/contributors. Thank you for joining us for another edition of Cornered Out of Court brought to you by the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education.