How Much Does a Guardian Get Paid in Illinois?

Illinois does not set a fixed rate or schedule for how much a guardian gets paid in Illinois. Under Section 27-1 of the Probate Act of 1975, a guardian (the statute calls them a “representative”) is entitled to “reasonable compensation” for services, paid from the ward’s estate and treated as a first-priority administrative expense.¹ What “reasonable” means in your case is decided by the probate court that appointed you, on each fee petition you file.

Two things follow from that. First, you cannot help yourself to fees from the ward’s money, no matter how many hours you have put in. Every dollar requires a petition and a court order. Second, the dollar amount depends less on a rate card than on how well you can document the work and justify it against the factors Illinois judges actually weigh.

What the Court Considers Reasonable

The Probate Act uses the phrase “reasonable compensation” without defining it, which leaves judges wide latitude. Illinois courts have developed a working set of factors through case law:

Time and effort spent on the ward’s affairs, backed by contemporaneous records.
Complexity of the duties. A ward with significant medical needs, behavioral issues, or a complicated financial portfolio supports higher fees than a straightforward guardianship.
Skill and expertise brought to the role. A guardian with professional qualifications in finance, healthcare, or law may receive more than a family member doing the same tasks, when that expertise directly benefits the ward.
Results achieved: whether the guardian’s actions improved the ward’s welfare, preserved assets, or secured benefits the ward was entitled to.
Size of the estate. Fees must stay proportionate. A court will not approve $20,000 in guardian fees against a $30,000 estate without extraordinary circumstances.

There is no statutory hourly rate in Illinois. What qualifies as reasonable depends on the factors above and the going rate for comparable services in your local area. Section 27-1 also requires fee awards to be “consistent with Section 11a-13.5” of the Probate Act, which sets guardian conduct standards.¹ A guardian who fails those standards can expect reduced or denied fees, no matter how clean the time records look.

One structural point affects who pays you. A guardian of the person handles care decisions but does not control the ward’s money; if a separate estate guardian exists, the personal guardian petitions the court for an order directing the estate guardian to release payment.² When one person serves in both roles, the fee analysis covers both sets of duties in a single petition.

What You Can Be Paid For

Ongoing Service Fees

The core of most fee petitions is the guardian’s regular work: coordinating medical care, visiting the ward, managing finances, communicating with service providers, and handling legal and administrative matters. Most guardians track this work by the hour and submit periodic fee petitions covering the time logged.

Expense Reimbursement

Out-of-pocket costs incurred while carrying out your duties are reimbursable. Common items include travel to visit the ward, court filing costs, and fees paid to accountants, medical providers, or other professionals working on the ward’s behalf. Each expense needs a receipt, and the court must approve reimbursement before you take the money from the estate.

Extraordinary Compensation

When the guardianship demands work beyond ordinary scope, such as managing litigation on the ward’s behalf, selling real estate, or handling a contested placement dispute, you can petition for additional compensation. The court evaluates these requests case by case. You need to show the extra work was necessary, benefited the ward, and the fees sought are proportionate to the effort.

How to Petition for Payment

No guardian in Illinois may take fees without a court order. The sequence is the same whether you are asking for your first payment or your tenth:

Prepare a written petition for the probate court that appointed you, detailing the services performed, the time spent, and the amount requested.
Attach supporting documentation: time logs, receipts, invoices. Courts want contemporaneous records created when the work was performed, not summaries written months later.
Serve notice on interested parties, typically family members and any co-guardians, so they have an opportunity to object.
Submit to court review. The judge may approve the petition in full, reduce it, or deny it. Contested petitions can go to a hearing.

Filing fees for guardianship matters vary by county. In Cook County, initial guardianship filing fees range from $50 for a person-only guardianship to $105 for estates exceeding $15,000.³ Fees for later compensation petitions may differ; confirm the current schedule with the local clerk’s office before filing.

Estate guardians must also file periodic accountings showing how the ward’s money has been spent and invested. Guardians of the person must file annual reports on the ward’s condition and care under Section 11a-17(b) of the Probate Act. These filings do double work: they satisfy the court’s oversight requirements and build the documentary record you will rely on when asking for fees.

Why Courts Cut or Deny Guardian Fees

Illinois case law shows clear patterns in when compensation gets reduced or denied.

Failure to file required reports. In one Illinois appellate case, a co-guardian’s fee request was denied after the guardian failed to file annual accountings on nine separate occasions. The court treated the repeated failures as a breach of fiduciary duty to the ward.⁴

No estate to pay from. If no guardianship estate exists, there is nothing to pay you with. In In re Estate of McInerny, an Illinois appellate court denied fee petitions from both the guardian and the guardian’s attorney because the ward’s only asset was a discretionary supplemental-needs trust with a spendthrift provision, which the guardian could not access to pay fees.⁴

Billing for personal activities. In the same McInerny case, the court found that grocery shopping, taking the ward to lunch, and taking the ward on vacations were not compensable guardian services. Your obligation is to represent the ward’s interests, not to bill the estate for activities a caring family member would do anyway.⁴

Waiting too long to file. In Estate of Goffinet, a guardian submitted a single claim covering nearly five years of personal services, filed only after the ward had died. The appellate court allowed the claim on other grounds but said pointedly that seeking five years of back compensation in a single post-death petition “may cast some doubt on the validity of the claim.” Courts strongly prefer quarterly or at least annual fee petitions filed while the ward is still alive.⁴

How Guardian Fees Are Taxed

Guardian compensation is taxable income. How you report it depends on whether you are in the business of providing guardian services.

A family member serving as guardian for a single relative is typically not in a trade or business. The compensation goes on line 8j of Schedule 1 (Form 1040) as other income, and no self-employment tax applies.⁵

A professional guardian who runs a guardianship practice as a business reports the income on Schedule C and pays self-employment tax through Schedule SE. The distinction turns on whether you are regularly engaged in providing guardian services for compensation, not whether you hold a particular professional title.⁵

On the ward’s side, guardian fees paid from the estate are generally not deductible. The narrow exception involves fees tied directly to obtaining court authority for medical treatment, nursing facility admission, or treatment with certain medications. In that situation the associated legal costs may qualify as medical expenses, deductible to the extent total medical expenses exceed 7.5% of the ward’s adjusted gross income.

One boundary worth knowing: employees of the Department of Human Services or the Department of Children and Family Services who are designated as guardians of state facility residents cannot collect fees for those services.¹

Practical Steps to Protect Your Fees

Keep records in real time. Courts are far more skeptical of time logs reconstructed from memory than contemporaneous notes jotted down after each visit or phone call. A simple spreadsheet with date, time spent, and a brief description of the task is enough.

File fee petitions regularly rather than letting years of unpaid service pile up. Quarterly is ideal; annual is the minimum courts seem comfortable with. A lump-sum claim filed after the ward’s death invites objections even when the records are solid.

Keep guardian work and family relationship separate in your records. If you take the ward to a doctor’s appointment, that is guardian work. If you take the ward to a family birthday party, it is not. Courts draw that line carefully, and your records should too.

Every dollar you take comes out of the ward’s estate. A guardianship that drains the estate through fees defeats the point of the appointment, and judges have no obligation to approve fees simply because you spent the time.

1
Illinois General Assembly. Illinois Code 755 ILCS 5/27-1 – Fees of Representative
2
Illinois General Assembly. Illinois Code 755 ILCS 5/11a-17 – Duties of Personal Guardian
3
State of Illinois Guardianship & Advocacy Commission. A Practitioner’s Guide to Adult Guardianship in Illinois – The Guardianship Process
4
Illinois Guardianship & Advocacy Commission. Guardianship Administration Issues – Fees for Guardians, Guardians ad Litem, and Attorneys
5
Internal Revenue Service. Family Caregivers and Self-Employment Tax