What Chicago families face when an elderly parent has no power of attorney: how Cook County guardianship works at the Daley Center probate division.
By Chicago Senior Advisor Care Team · September 16, 2026
Almost nobody plans to file for a Cook County guardianship for an elderly parent with no power of attorney. The families who end up in the Probate Division at the Richard J. Daley Center, 50 West Washington Street, arrive there sideways. A father in Jefferson Park has a stroke and comes out of it unable to say what month it is. A mother in Beverly is admitted to Little Company of Mary with a urinary tract infection, clears the infection, and still cannot follow a two-step instruction. The case manager at Advocate Christ in Oak Lawn or at Rush University Medical Center starts talking about a discharge plan, asks who holds the health care power of attorney, and the adult children look at each other. Nobody ever signed anything. Dad said he would get around to it. Mom did not believe in lawyers.
That single missing document is the difference between a discharge that takes four days and a discharge that takes four weeks. Without an Illinois health care power of attorney or a power of attorney for property, no adult child automatically has legal authority over a parent's bank account, their bungalow, their Medicare supplement, or their signature on an assisted living residency contract. Illinois does not grant that authority by blood relationship. It grants it by document, or by court order. When the document does not exist and the parent can no longer sign one, the court order is what is left, and in Chicago and suburban Cook County that means a petition filed under Article XIa of the Illinois Probate Act of 1975 in the Probate Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County.
It is worth saying plainly what this article is and is not. This is a plain-English map of the process so a family can walk into a lawyer's office knowing what to ask. It is not legal advice, and guardianship is one of the few areas of senior care where trying to do it without an Illinois attorney usually costs more than hiring one. Families in DuPage County file in Wheaton, Lake County families in Waukegan, Will County families in Joliet, and Kane County families at the Judicial Center in St. Charles — the statute is the same statewide, but local courtroom practice, standing orders, and required forms differ enough that county matters.
A guardianship petition in Illinois does not move on a family's word that a parent is confused. Under the Probate Act, the petition must be supported by a report from a physician who has examined the respondent — the legal term for the parent — within a defined window before filing. In Cook County that report is submitted on the Probate Division's own form, and courtroom clerks send petitions back over it constantly, usually because the exam is stale or because the physician described a diagnosis without describing function. A judge is not asking whether your mother has Alzheimer's disease. A judge is asking what she can and cannot decide: whether she understands that she has money, whether she grasps what a residency agreement obligates her to, whether she can weigh a surgical risk. Ask the physician at Northwestern Memorial, Loyola in Maywood, or wherever the parent is being treated to write about capacity in those functional terms.
The second fixture is the guardian ad litem. The court appoints an attorney whose client is not you and not your siblings — it is the parent. The guardian ad litem visits, explains the petition and the respondent's rights in language the parent can follow, asks whether the parent objects, asks whether the parent wants their own lawyer, and files a written report recommending for or against. Families are sometimes rattled to learn that this stranger's report carries more weight with the judge than the petition itself. That is the design. Guardianship strips a legal adult of the right to decide where to live, what treatment to accept, and how to spend their own money, and Illinois builds in an independent voice before that happens. Treat the guardian ad litem visit seriously: be present if allowed, have the medical records organized, and do not coach the parent.
Illinois guardianship is not one thing. The first split is person versus estate. A guardian of the person makes decisions about residence, medical treatment, and daily care — this is the one that lets you sign an assisted living negotiated service agreement or consent to a procedure. A guardian of the estate handles money and property: the checking account, the Social Security direct deposit, the Portage Park two-flat, the long-term care insurance claim. Many Cook County families need both and one person is appointed to both roles, but they are legally distinct, and an estate guardianship brings ongoing duties a person guardianship does not, including an inventory of assets and periodic accountings filed with the court.
The second split is plenary versus limited. A plenary guardianship transfers essentially all decision-making. A limited guardianship transfers only the specific powers the order names, leaving the parent legally in charge of everything else. Illinois law directs courts toward the least restrictive arrangement that actually protects the person, and limited guardianship is underused in practice — partly because facilities and banks find plenary orders simpler to accept. If your mother in Evanston can still choose her own doctor and manage a grocery budget but cannot be trusted with a home equity offer, say so; a limited order preserves dignity that a plenary order erases permanently. Separately, when a parent is at genuine and immediate risk while a full petition is pending, Illinois allows a temporary guardianship of limited duration, which is the mechanism families use when a hospital discharge cannot wait for a full hearing.
Before signing an order, an Illinois judge wants to know why something less drastic will not work. The most important alternative most Chicago families have never heard of is the Illinois Health Care Surrogate Act. When a physician certifies in the medical record that a patient lacks decisional capacity and there is no health care power of attorney and no guardian, the Act allows a surrogate decision-maker — drawn from a statutory priority list that starts with a spouse and adult children — to make medical treatment decisions. That is genuinely useful. A surrogate can consent to treatment at UI Health, agree to a rehabilitation plan, and participate in discharge planning without anyone going to court.
What the Surrogate Act cannot do is the reason so many families end up at the Daley Center anyway. It does not give anyone authority over money. A surrogate cannot move funds, sell the house, cash in an annuity, apply for Medicaid on a parent's behalf when the application requires signing away or documenting assets, or sign a financial contract. Assisted living in the Chicago area runs roughly $4,500 to $6,500 a month and memory care roughly $5,500 to $8,000, and those obligations are financial contracts. If a parent still has enough capacity to understand what a power of attorney is, even on a good day and even with early dementia, executing an Illinois statutory short form power of attorney with a lawyer is faster, vastly cheaper, and less invasive than guardianship — and families should ask whether that window is truly closed before filing. It is also worth ruling out the uglier possibility first: if someone already has documents and is using them to drain a parent's accounts, that is a report to Illinois Adult Protective Services at 1-866-800-1409, not a guardianship petition.
A guardianship order does not find a parent a place to live. Once appointed, you can sign an IDPH-licensed assisted living establishment's negotiated service agreement, consent to the move, and handle the money behind it — but you still have to do the work of touring, checking each facility's license record through the Illinois Department of Public Health's facility directory, and reading the service agreement closely enough to know what triggers a rate increase. If the move is into a Supportive Living Program community, the Medicaid financial application and the Determination of Need assessment still have to be completed, and as guardian of the estate you are the one signing and documenting. Expect the facility to ask for a certified copy of the letters of office, not the petition and not the order itself.
Guardianship also does not end. It is a supervised relationship: an estate guardian answers to the court through accountings, and courts can and do review whether the arrangement still fits. If a parent recovers function after a stroke or after a delirium clears, Illinois law provides for modifying or terminating the guardianship, and a good guardian raises that rather than waiting to be asked. Families who want a second set of eyes on how a facility is treating a ward can contact the Illinois Long-Term Care Ombudsman, and suburban Cook County families can reach AgeOptions, the area agency on aging in Oak Park, for care options counseling; Chicago residents go through the City of Chicago Area Agency on Aging, and the statewide Senior HelpLine is 1-800-252-8966. The families who come through this best are the ones who treat the court order as a tool for a care plan, not as the care plan.
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