Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Illinois

Your question is worth an in-person consultation with an experienced estate planning attorney to better explain what you have been told. If you use a simple will leaving everything to your wife, yes, you would be trusting her to honor your intentions as a couple and trusting, further, that she would not be swayed by others, particularly as time passes and her cognitive functions may decline. Similarly, she would be trusting you.

There is something called a "joint and mutual will," which is almost never utilized by estate planning attorneys. In theory, it would lock the survivor into the will created before the passing of the first to die. This typically creates issues as there are often very good reasons for the will to be changed as time passes, changes that the decedent would have trusted the other spouse to make, changes that the first to die would readily make if alive (perhaps based on an unexpected development, such as an injury or disability that creates a need to be met, maybe even in the family of the first to have died). Costly litigation may ensue to allow the will to be changed regardless the original designation. You probably will not find an attorney willing to use such a will without making it abundantly clear that he or she does not recommend it.

The better courses include a living trust or testamentary trust (providing for your spouse for the remainder of her life), providing for some division of the estate at the outset if funds are sufficient, ... Your plan needs to be evaluated in light of dialogue that can only take place during a consultation. If the estate is significant, tax considerations would also come into play.