Selling Your Parents' House After They Pass Away: What Actually Happens, Step by Step
Three routes out of a parent's house in Illinois, and the one you are on decides who is allowed to sign. Here is how to find out which is yours.
By Moe Hannon, Realtor · Ellyn & Main at KW Premiere Properties, Elmhurst IL · Updated September 2026
- Three routes, not one. A living trust, a recorded transfer on death instrument, or probate. The recorded deed tells you which one you are on.
- Probate is not automatic. A transfer on death instrument recorded before your parent died moves the house with no court at all.
- Insurance is the expensive thing families miss. Most homeowner policies restrict coverage once a house is empty, and the clock is shorter than you think.
- You are exempt from the Illinois seller disclosure report when you sell as executor, administrator or trustee. You still disclose what you know.
- The capital gains bill is usually smaller than you fear. The basis generally steps up to the value on the date of death.
People type selling my parents house into Google at eleven at night, usually a week or two after a funeral, usually with a folder of paperwork nobody has opened yet. If that is you, I am sorry. And the part you are dreading is more organized than it looks right now.
I sell estate property in DuPage County. This is what happens, in the order it happens, from someone who does the house half of it for a living. The legal calls belong to an estate attorney. I am a realtor.
Find the deed first, because it decides everything else
Before probate, before cleaning, before anyone says a word about price: find out how the house is titled. There are three routes out of a parent's house in Illinois and they are not interchangeable. The recorded deed tells you which one you are on, and you can pull it from the county recorder without a lawyer. In DuPage County that is the Recorder's office, searchable by name.
| What the records show | Who has authority to sell | Court involved? |
|---|---|---|
| The deed is in the name of a living trust | The successor trustee named in the trust | No |
| A transfer on death instrument was recorded before your parent died | The named beneficiary, after recording a notice of death affidavit | No |
| Both parents are on the deed as joint tenants and one survives | The surviving parent, alone | No |
| The deed is in your parent's name alone, with nothing else in place | The executor or administrator, after the court issues letters of office | Yes |
If there is a trust, the successor trustee signs and you skip the courthouse
A living trust is the smoothest version of this. The person named successor trustee takes over, proves who they are, and sells the house without an estate ever being opened. No judge, no public file, no waiting on letters.
The catch is that a trust only controls what was put into it. If your parent signed a trust in 2011 and then refinanced in 2018, there is a real chance the lender pulled the house back out to close the loan and nobody put it back. Read the deed, not the trust binder. I wrote the trustee's version of this whole process out separately, step by step, in selling a house in a trust after death.
If there is a transfer on death instrument, one recorded affidavit does most of the work
Illinois has a tool a lot of families have never heard of. Under the Real Property Transfer on Death Instrument Act, an owner can record a document naming who gets the house when they die. It has to be signed in front of two witnesses, acknowledged before a notary, and, the part people miss, recorded with the county recorder before the owner dies. A copy found in a desk drawer afterward does nothing at all.
If one was recorded, the beneficiary files a notice of death affidavit with the recorder in the county where the house sits, which confirms title in their name. No estate, no judge. From there they sell it like any other house they own.
If there is neither, you are opening an estate in Wheaton
No trust and no transfer on death instrument means probate. In DuPage County that is filed at the 18th Judicial Circuit courthouse at 505 N. County Farm Road in Wheaton, and it all goes in electronically. The court appoints an executor if there was a will, an administrator if there was not, and issues letters of office. Until those letters exist, nobody can sign a contract on the house.
Here is the part nobody tells families: the house does not have to sit still while that runs. Valuing it, clearing it and getting it ready can all happen during probate. I have had houses on the market within a week of letters being issued because everything else was already finished. That sequencing is the whole job of a probate real estate agent in DuPage County, and it is also why selling a house in Wheaton comes up in half of these conversations.
Call the insurance carrier before you sort a single drawer
The most expensive mistake I see has nothing to do with price. Most homeowner policies limit or drop coverage once a house is unoccupied, and the clock is shorter than families assume. A burst pipe in an uninsured empty house in January costs more than every repair anyone was arguing about.
So: call the carrier, say the owner has died and the house is empty, ask what they need, and get the answer in writing. Then change the locks, keep the heat on, forward the mail, keep the lawn cut, and have someone walk through weekly. None of that is hard. All of it gets skipped because everyone assumes someone else did it.
Get the value as of the date of death before anything leaves the house
Two numbers, and families mix them up constantly. One is what the house will sell for now. The other is what it was worth the day your parent died, and that is the number the tax side cares about, because the IRS generally sets the basis of inherited property at its fair market value on the date of death (IRS Publication 551).
In plain terms, that usually means the tax bill is much smaller than people brace for. As an illustration only: if a house was worth $420,000 the day your mother died and it sells for $430,000 eight months later, the gain in question is that $10,000, not forty years of appreciation. Get the date-of-death figure documented from comparable sales while the house is still furnished. Reconstructing it a year later from photographs is much harder and much less convincing. When the house does sell, that figure and the sale price will not match, and why the two numbers come apart explains what that does and does not mean.
Clear the house in an order that keeps your siblings talking
The fights are almost never about the house. They are about a ring, a set of tools, a photo album, and about who got to decide. So give it a shape. Keepsakes first, everyone gets the same written window with a real date on it, then estate sale or auction, then donation, then haul-away. One update to everybody at once, every single time.
And if one sibling has been doing all of it, say that out loud early. Resentment costs more than a dumpster.
Decide what gets fixed and what does not
An inherited house does not need to be perfect. Safe, clean and working is the bar. Roof, water intrusion, furnace, electrical panel and anything that stops an inspection are worth the money. A new kitchen is not. Buyers will price a dated house as a dated house and then pay up for one that is plainly dry and sound.
Paint, carpet cleaning, yard work and light bulbs beat nearly everything else per dollar spent. If the estate is short on cash, that is the whole list.
The disclosure paperwork you owe, and the paperwork you do not
If you are selling as an executor, administrator or trustee, Illinois exempts you from the residential seller disclosure report. The statute covers transfers by a fiduciary in the course of administering a decedent's estate, a guardianship, a conservatorship or a trust. It also covers a transfer that happens under a transfer on death instrument.
That is not permission to stay quiet about something you know. If you grew up in that house and you know the basement takes water in a hard rain, disclose it in writing. It costs you nothing and it prevents the argument that unwinds a closing three weeks in. The federal lead-based paint disclosure for homes built before 1978 is separate and still applies to you.
What to do when one of you wants to keep the house
This comes up in roughly a third of the estates I work on. One sibling wants to buy the others out and nobody knows what a fair number looks like.
Start with a written opinion of value from someone outside the family, so the figure is not coming from anyone with a stake in it. Then the buying sibling either refinances into their own name or borrows against their share, and the estate or the trust deeds the house over. The attorney handles the mechanics of that, not me.
Say it early, though. The worst version of this is the one where somebody announces at the closing table that they never wanted to sell in the first place.
The thing people are really asking when they search selling my parents house is not how a listing works. It is "am I allowed to do this yet, and what do I do first." The answer to the first one is on the deed. The answer to the second one is the insurance company. Everything after that is just a house, and houses I can handle.
I am a realtor, not an attorney or an accountant, and this is not legal or tax advice. Who has authority, what the estate owes, and how a buyout gets papered are questions for the estate's lawyer. What I can tell you is what the house needs and in what order, because that is the part I do every month.
Not sure whether you are even allowed to sell yet?
Send me the address and I will tell you what the recorded deed says, which of the three routes you are on, and what the house is worth as of the date of death. No pressure to list anything. Most of these calls happen months before a sign goes in the yard.
Straight answers, no hedging.
Do I have to go through probate to sell my parents' house in Illinois?
Not always. If the house was held in a living trust, the successor trustee sells it without opening an estate. If your parent recorded a transfer on death instrument before they died, the named beneficiary confirms title with a notice of death affidavit and sells it. Probate is the route when neither is in place and the deed is still in your parent's name alone.
Who is allowed to sign the listing agreement?
Whoever currently holds legal authority over the house, which is not the same as whoever is doing all the work. With a trust it is the successor trustee. With a transfer on death instrument it is the beneficiary once title is confirmed. In probate it is the executor or administrator, and only after the court issues letters of office. If the house passed to several people as co-owners, everyone on title signs.
Will we owe capital gains tax when we sell?
Usually far less than families expect. The IRS generally treats the basis of inherited property as its fair market value on the date of death, so what gets measured is the change since then rather than the decades your parents owned it. That is exactly why the date-of-death value should be documented early. Your accountant makes the actual call on the return.
One of my siblings is living in the house. What happens now?
Handle it before the house goes on the market, not during. Who may occupy the property depends on who holds authority and what the will or trust says, so that question goes to the estate attorney first. From the sale side, showings with an occupant who does not want to sell go badly and buyers feel it immediately. Have the uncomfortable conversation in week two rather than during the inspection period.
About the agent
I'm Maureen - but everyone calls me Moe. I have been selling real estate since 2019 and I work out of the Ellyn & Main team at KW Premiere Properties, 100 N Addison Ave in Elmhurst. I hold the Seller Representative Specialist and C2EX designations along with a Luxury Homes certification, and I am a member of KW Luxury. At least $250 of every commission check goes to ShowerUp Chicago and the YMCA of Elmhurst, where I sit on the board. If you are sorting out a house after a death, call me at 630-890-5430.
This is a realtor's guide, not legal or tax advice.