The Real Estate Law Firm, LLC

Focus and practice areas

This Illinois firm works across three connected areas of law. Its home base is St. Charles, a city in the western suburbs of Chicago. The three areas are real estate transactions, estate planning, and business and commercial law.Real estate is the primary one of the three, and the firm's name points straight to it.

Real estate transaction work is largely document work. A deal moves through a contract, a title review, a set of disclosures, and a closing, and each step produces paperwork that a lawyer checks. The firm's service lists follow that path across both homes and commercial property. Estate planning and business work then attach to that real estate practice.

Within real estate, the firm divides its work between residential and commercial deals. Residential covers standard home purchases and sales along with less common closings. Commercial covers property sales, leases, and investment structures. The business and estate planning services often reach the same clients, since a property buyer may also need an LLC or a will drawn up.

How the team is built

The site names two attorneys and one senior paralegal. Thomas J. Rigby is the owner and principal attorney, and he founded the firm in 2013. His background covers title insurance, corporate real estate, and litigation. Before starting the firm, he worked as in-house counsel for a title insurance provider.

That title insurance history matters in real estate law. Title problems, liens, and gaps in the chain of ownership are common reasons a closing stalls. An attorney who has worked inside a title company has seen those issues from the insurer's side of the table. Rigby works with buyers, sellers, and investors, and his caseload includes residential and commercial deals along with distressed property sales.

Henry Winebrake is listed as a residential real estate attorney, a role centered on home closings and the paperwork around them. Carmen Salceda is the senior real estate paralegal. In my opinion, a named paralegal on a small real estate team is a practical sign, because paralegals handle much of the document flow that keeps a closing on schedule.

Residential closings and what they involve

The residential menu spans several closing types. It includes For Sale By Owner closings, inherited property closings, auction and REO sales, vacant lots, and quit claim deeds. Each of these carries its own paperwork and its own risks for a buyer or seller. A quit claim deed, for one, transfers whatever interest a person holds without a promise of clear title, so it fits family transfers well.

The services the firm names track the stages of an Illinois closing. Those include contract drafting and review, title searches and lien resolution, disclosure compliance, attorney review period negotiation, and representation on closing day. Illinois runs many closings through an attorney review period, a short window after a contract is signed when either side's lawyer can propose changes or raise objections. Handling that window well can decide whether a deal holds together.

Inherited property and REO closings each deserve a note. An inherited sale can involve an estate that is still open, which pulls in probate questions before title can pass cleanly. An REO sale has a bank as the seller, which usually means the buyer signs the lender's forms and works to a tighter schedule. Both are cases where a lawyer reading the contract early can save trouble later.

Commercial, business, and entity work

On the commercial side, the firm handles property purchases and sales, leases, 1031 exchanges, multi-unit buildings, and vacant property. A 1031 exchange lets an investor defer capital gains tax by rolling proceeds from one property into another, and it runs on strict deadlines set by the IRS. Missing one of those deadlines can undo the tax benefit, so the timing and paperwork carry real weight.

Leases and multi-unit buildings bring their own questions. A commercial lease sets terms that can run for years. It covers rent, repairs, and what happens if a tenant leaves early. A multi-unit purchase asks a buyer to weigh existing tenants and their leases as part of the deal.

The business services connect closely to that commercial work. The firm handles LLC and entity formation, professional limited liability companies, asset purchase agreements, and business purchases and sales. A professional limited liability company is the form used by licensed professionals such as doctors or accountants, and it carries rules a standard LLC does not. Pairing entity formation with a property purchase under one roof can simplify how an investor holds and buys assets.

Estate planning services

The estate planning menu covers living trusts, wills, powers of attorney, advance healthcare directives, special needs planning, and legacy planning. These documents decide who manages a person's affairs and who inherits, both during life and after death. That range rounds out the firm's three stated areas of work.

Powers of attorney and healthcare directives handle a different moment. A financial power of attorney names someone to manage money if the signer cannot. An advance healthcare directive records medical wishes and names a person to speak for the patient. These documents work during a person's life, and the firm lists them next to its wills and trusts.

Special needs planning is different from a standard will. It usually involves a trust built to support a person with a disability without cutting off their access to government benefits. Getting that structure right takes care, since a direct inheritance can disqualify someone from the programs they rely on. As a reviewer, I read the inclusion of special needs and legacy planning as a sign the firm handles estate matters with some complexity.

What the record shows

The firm states it has been operating since 2013. It also reports more than 10,000 real estate transactions closed. That figure appears on the home page and in the site's structured data. A count like that points to a high-volume transactional practice.

From the St. Charles office, the firm serves Kane, Will, DuPage, Lake, and McHenry Counties. It also keeps pages for Naperville and Aurora, two of the larger cities in that area. This is a defined regional footprint across the western and northern Chicago suburbs.

The site does not list law schools or admission dates for either attorney, so a reader cannot check those credentials from the pages themselves. What it does show is a stated focus on real estate, estate planning, and business law, a founding year of 2013, and a team of two attorneys and one senior paralegal working from a single St. Charles office.