Should I remove or save my american sweetgum?
American Sweetgum isn't a habitual problem species, so a sound one is usually worth an opinion before it comes out. Nobody calls about sweetgum because it is dangerous — they call about the gumballs. It is a strong, long-lived, ice-tolerant shade tree that happens to carpet the yard with spiked seed balls every winter, and a lot of sweetgum work starts as "can you stop the balls" before it ever becomes a removal quote.
How to tell which one you've got
On high-pH soil sweetgum goes chlorotic — pale leaves with green veins — and on a hot, dry, reflective site it will scorch leaf margins brown by August. Stress is scorch or early fall color on a tree that flushes normally the following spring; dying is dieback starting at the top and outer branches, dark weeping streaks on the trunk from bleeding necrosis, and thinning that worsens two or three seasons running.
The structural question
This is one of the better ice performers in the Midwest — sweetgum lands on the resistant side of ice-susceptibility rankings alongside black walnut, hickory, and Kentucky coffeetree, because the branch attachments are strong and the crown is upright rather than broad. When one does fail, the cause is usually decay behind an old topping cut, a codominant stem with included bark, or the whole root plate letting go in saturated clay during a wind event — not routine limb shedding.
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