Do you have to disclose a death in a house in Illinois?

If you're asking this, you've probably lost someone, and the house is one more thing to handle. Here is what the law says in plain terms.

The Residential Real Property Disclosure Act requires most sellers of a house, a condo unit, or a building of up to four units to complete a state form before the contract is signed. The form has 24 statements. They cover flooding and leaks, the foundation, roof, walls, floors, electrical, plumbing, heating, well and septic, radon, asbestos, lead, earth stability, termites, fuel tanks, boundary disputes, uncorrected violation notices, and methamphetamine manufacture.

None of the statements asks whether a person died in the home, how, or when. Nothing else in the Act mentions a death in the property either. The form asks what you're aware of about the property itself.

Illinois does have a statute that speaks to this directly, but it's in the Real Estate License Act, which governs licensed brokers and agents. It says no cause of action arises against a licensee for failing to disclose that an occupant of the property had HIV or any other medical condition, or "that the property was the site of an act or occurrence that had no effect on the physical condition of the property or its environment or the structures located thereon."

The sentence doesn't list causes of death, or mention death at all. A death that left the property physically unchanged fits its words. Read it closely, though: it protects a licensee from being sued over silence. It doesn't say anything about the seller, and it doesn't cover an occurrence that did affect the property's condition.

The same Act requires licensees to treat customers honestly and not to give them false information knowingly or negligently. So an agent who is asked isn't free to make something up. We're a buyer, not a brokerage, so none of the license law is about us. It's here because it's the one Illinois statute we found that addresses the subject.

It would be simpler to tell you that you never have to mention it. The text doesn't go that far, in two places.

First, the disclosure form defines a material defect as a condition that would have a substantial adverse effect on the value of the property or would significantly impair the health or safety of future occupants. The 24 statements are about physical and legal conditions, and the Act doesn't say whether a death with no physical effect could ever be treated as a material defect. We haven't found text that says it is one. We also can't point you to text that says it can't be.

Second, the Act has a section titled "Other law." It says the Act isn't intended to limit remedies or modify any obligation to disclose "created by any other statute or that may exist in common law in order to avoid fraud, misrepresentation, or deceit in the transaction." In other words, completing the form correctly doesn't answer every question about what a seller may or may not say.

Not raising something and giving a false answer when asked are not the same act, and the law may not treat them the same. Where that line falls for you is your attorney's call, not ours. If a buyer asks you directly whether someone died in the house, talk to your attorney before you answer, and don't answer falsely.

Sometimes the event itself changes the house: a death that wasn't discovered for a while, a fire, damage to flooring or subfloor, a room that had to be professionally cleaned. Those are physical conditions, and the form's statements about material defects in the walls, floors, and systems apply to them the way they would to any other damage.

The form reflects the current condition of the property. Its own note says it doesn't include previous problems the seller reasonably believes have been corrected, and a seller isn't liable under the Act for an error they had no knowledge of or that rested on a reasonable belief the defect was corrected. If the work was done properly, keep the invoices. If it hasn't been done, describe the condition as it is. You answer from actual knowledge, and the Act doesn't require any specific investigation to complete the form.

Many people asking this are selling a parent's home after the parent died there. In that case the report itself may not apply to you at all. The Act exempts transfers by a fiduciary in the course of administering a decedent's estate, and transfers ordered by a probate court. Its definition of seller also leaves out a beneficiary who has never occupied the property and never had management responsibility for it.

An exemption from the form isn't permission to mislead a buyer; duties that exist outside this Act, like the ones against fraud and misrepresentation, are still there. But it does mean an executor usually isn't filling out 24 statements about a house they didn't live in. Our page on how to sell an inherited house in Illinois covers who signs and when, and our guide to what Illinois sellers have to disclose goes through the form and its exemptions.

We buy houses to renovate, and we look at the roof, the structure, the systems, and the contents. A death in the home doesn't change how we look at any of that. You can tell us or not. We would like to know about anything that affected the house physically, because we'll find it during the work either way.

You don't have to clean, clear out, or repair anything before asking for an offer, and you don't have to explain the family's circumstances to us. A cash offer is usually lower than what a cleaned-out, repaired house would bring on the open market. If you'd rather list the house, an agent and your attorney can tell you how they'd handle a buyer's questions.