If You Win The Illinois Lottery, Do You Have To Give Your Name?

Whenever there's a really huge lottery jackpot that produces one single winner, there's a lot of buzz in the news and social media.

So, that's what's happened after Wednesday night's Powerball drawing for $478.2 million was claimed by a single player in Georgia, where the winning ticket was sold at a Quick Mart in a town named Buford, home of about 18,000 people.

The as-of-yet unnamed winner has a few decisions to make now, like whether to take the annuitized prize of $478.2 million or a lump sum payment of $230.6 million. Both prize options are before taxes. If the winner selects the annuity option, they will receive one immediate payment followed by 29 annual payments.

The other decision is to maintain the winner's anonymity, or let the world know who just got a huge pile of money. Luckily, in Georgia, it should be a pretty easy call to make.

Sure, Their Lives Change For The Better With An Influx Of A Lot Of Cash, But Lottery Winners Have Also Talked About How Bad Things Can Get If Everyone Knows You Won

One thing that many lottery winners have happen, much to their annoyance, is everyone they've ever known comes out of the woodwork looking for a payout of some sort because the winner's name has been made public.

I had heard once that if you wanted to remain anonymous with your lottery win, you should have picked another state to live in other than Illinois...but it turns out that's only partially true.

In Illinois, The Size Of Your Jackpot Win Plays A Big Part In Whether Or Not You Can Keep Your Identity Private

Here in Illinois, just like in Georgia, if you win a lottery jackpot worth over $250,000 you can request to keep your name and hometown confidential. We've had Illinois lottery winners get a lot more than that as you probably know, so I guess that Illinois lottery officials think that prize money totaling less than a quarter million dollars just isn't worth anyone's time to bug a winner for a few bucks.

If you wanted to keep all that information to yourself, these states are happy to try to accommodate you (hat tip to MyHighPlains.com):

• Delaware: Winners are allowed to remain anonymous, regardless of prize size.
• Kansas: Winners in Kansas can request to remain anonymous.
• Maryland: In most cases, winners can remain anonymous.
• Mississippi: The state lottery won’t identify a winner unless they have given written consent.
• Missouri: Your name is only released if you give the lottery written consent
• Montana: Your name is not released, but where you live may be.
• New Jersey: Winners can choose to remain anonymous.
• North Dakota: Winners have the option to remain anonymous
• South Carolina: A winner in South Carolina can remain anonymous, despite recent efforts to change that.
• Wyoming: Winners can remain anonymous or give permission to the state’s lottery to share some information.