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S/O wills - deciding on guardians is waaaay hard.
Like 2vthokies, we plan to get a will in place asap but something that I'm really hung up on his deciding on guardians. I hate the idea of burdening our parents (DH's parents are older, mine are divorced and are kind of re-living their 20's). My cousin and her husband are fantastic parents but they live off of one salary now and are also pretty religious, not that there's anything wrong with that, but we aren't so it would be odd. As mentioned in my previous post, I don't really agree with B&SIL's parenting on a few levels. It seems weird to select friends of ours instead of family.
Sigh. No one is perfect and the people who are perfect are old or already poor so adding another kid to their plate seems unfair.
Would anyone mind sharing who they selected as guardians and why?
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Re: S/O wills - deciding on guardians is waaaay hard.
We chose my sister because she is the most with it of my siblings. I also feel she would also do the best job raising DS.
DH is older than me and his siblings all have college aged kids, so we didn't want to go with them as the first choice. DH's sister is our back up if my sister would be unable to take DS.
Here's something for you to think about. I don't know how old your DH's parents are, but when my sister made her will, she gave my mom custody of her kids until she turned a certain age. Meaning that if when they died if my mom hadn't yet turn 65 or whatever age, then she would get custody. Not that the kids would be taken from my mom when she turned 65. Just food for thought.
It is. We are going to get formal after DS2 arrives, but we've shared our guardianship decisions.
We named siblings as guardians. We did not want to choose parents because of the age and the fact they have health limitations already. We did not want to choose friends for a couple reasons - we have family available, and friendships can wax and wane over time.
Nobody's perfect but DH and I reconciled ourselves this way - we can only ask that our guardians do the best job they can raising our kids, and we told our guardians "In this worst-case scenario we're both dead so we promise not to interfere."
I don't post very often, but we're working on this right now as well. I had the same thought about not wanting to burden anyone with the financial aspect of caring for 2 more children, but that's why we have life insurance policies. Is that an option for you?
We've selected an aunt and uncle of mine to raise the boys if we die. They are in their early 40s, happily married, live close to other relatives of ours, and have 3 children of their own- 1 in college and 2 in middle school. We picked them because it is important to us to have a married couple with similar child rearing styles and strong sense of family raise our children if we can't. Are they perfect? Of course not, but they will love our children and take good care of them. Ideally when my sister is older and more settled, we will switch guardianship over to her, but right now she's still going to college and learning how to take care of herself.
Good luck choosing someone!
This is a great post - we're trying to figure out what we'd do as well.
I just don't know who we would choose at this point. Even though he's super loving and 2 years older than DH, BIL leads a very bachelor lifestyle as a bartender and sometimes struggles to keep a job or roof over his head for more than a year at a time; my half-sisters are so young - the oldest is turning 21 but she's going into speacial ed teaching and is awesome with kids.
I never thought of the age limit idea idea to our parents being guardians - that could work out great because even though they will reach 65 in about 6 years, that gives my sister more time to grow up and get settled.
Gosh, I'm so jealous that you all trust your siblings so much! My brother is in the military and rarely in the states and DH's sister lives on the other side of the country. I think she would be overjoyed to be asked but sometimes I think her husband is kind of a jerk to small children. Hmmmm.
Interesting the idea of putting an age cap on the grandparents. I think DH's parents have already hit that sample age, though.
you definitely need to select who makes you most comfortable. we picked my sister because it was the most logical. She knows DD really well, we like her fiance, they have good jobs, manage money well and are willing to take on the responsibility. Also, DH really likes how his family is really close and would include DD in everything. We know there is such a slim chance of anything happening to both of us but we did make specific instructions about use of $$ and all those things. We gave my sister the draft copies of our will so she could add anything that she thought was important.
It is a weird thing to be talking about but states all have such weird laws about if no instructions were left that we knew we needed to do it.
Oh man. We are having this very discussion right now. In fact, I plan to make an appt. with an attorney my Insurance Agent recommended within the next few weeks. We are having very similar problems as you are. My obvious choice is my Mom, but she just turned 70 in August and I would feel badly burdening her.
I have two sisters. One I am not close to at all. She is born-again and while there is nothing wrong with that, it's not where DH and I are coming from. He, more than me, would have a problem with our LO being raised that way. Also she lives in Texas, we would hate for LO to have to uproot their lives so far away. My other sister is in the area and would seem to be the most logical choice, but she is a notoriously bad decision maker and awful with money. However, if we picked someone else she would be crushed. Crushed.
I have two best friends that are like sisters to me. I am really leaning hard on picking one of them, but she isn't "perfect" either (she will admit she is kind of a slob, not really that traditional, suffers from anxiety and other PD). But I love her and I know she would raise our LO as if it were her own and she is very aligned with where me and DH now.
I think my husband and I have decided to pick my Mom for now. When she passes (and hopefully that's no time soon), we plan to re-evaluate and update our will based on LO's personality and where the other possible guardians are in their lives. I just feel like I have to make a decision soon and don't want this dragging on and on forever. God luck! It's soooo not the easiest decision to make.
We've really struggled with this. My parents are elderly and not up for it.
DH"s parents are recently divorced and drink a lot. THey're out.
My one brother's wife hates children and his insanity made international headlines a few months ago. He's out.
DH's younger sister is single and 24 going on 12. SHe's out.
THe other sister is kind of a biatch. THey can't wait to get their own kids out of the house. Like her parents, they drink a lot. I wouldn't be comfortable having them raise my kids.
We're currently down to my brother and his nutty wife as the best option. They have four kids my son adores. THeir youngest is smack in between my son and our expected baby.
Our backups are my cousin and her husband and the godparents.
We chose my sister and BIL. They have 2 kids already but our life insurance should make it so that our kids are not a financial burden to them. ALso we have a trust set up (along with out wills) that will dole out the money for raising the kids so they don't get one large lump sum.
No one is perfect and of course there are things I disagree with my sister on (they are Catholic and while I grew up Catholic we are not religious right now, and sometimes she isn't big on the sympathy), but if we didn't have them I really don't know who we would choose.
Difficulties choosing a guardian is why we put off doing our wills for so long. We don't have siblings, so it seems even harder in a way.
Initially we picked a couple we were close with. They were struggling to have a baby of their own but I thought they'd make good parents. They're here and I thought they'd do a good job raising T. But then they split up four months later. Ugh.
We ended up picking one of DH's cousins who is local as the primary and one of my cousins in OH as backup. The local cousin we don't see a whole lot, but at least T would be near some of her family. My cousin is 15 yrs older than me, and has married children of her own, but at least she has enough time on her hands to watch T, and although they are a different religion they are good and stable people. I'm not sure DH has actually mentioned our choice to his cousin yet, though. We may change our plans in a few years if some of DH's friends ever settle down...
I honestly think some of my friends would be a better fit in that they are local, have similar lifestyles/ages/kids, etc. but I can't imagine how family would take it if we chose friends first. I also think if it came down to it, my (half) sister would really rise to the occasion despite her age.
FWIW, when I was in college my step-mom and father decided to make me the guardian of my half-sisters (then around ages 8 and 5) with my grandmother (then 70) as support or co-guardian of some sort if they both passed. My dad has 3 brothers, one that had a family of his own with a similar aged child, but they chose me and grandma instead.
We chose my mom. She's still pretty young (she'll be 54 in March) and she's actually retiring this year. She loves J like crazy (and he loves her too), sees him more than any of his other grandparents, she has a house with a big yard, she shares our values on a lot of things (religion, politics, parenting), and she has the time and energy to raise him if necessary.
We chose not to have my dad and stepmom do it because 1) they already have two young kids (sisters 8 and 9) and are very busy with them, and 2) they are very religious, which, will I respect it, is not something that we want to raise J with. We chose not to have the ILs because they're both older (late 60s), FIL has health problems, and while they probably could afford it best financially, they also live 6 hours away and that would be a major upheaval for J.
But: when (assuming it's when and not if) my brother and his girlfriend get married, we would probably switch it to them. Just because of the age factor. They love J too and are both ready to have a family, and I know they would be willing to accept that burden. They both make a good living (she's a doctor! gotta love in-house expertise) and would likely stay in the area, which is important to me.
That said . . . we haven't set up a will yet. Vtkendra sent me all the info a while ago but we've been to busy to do it. If this little nubbin actually goes somewhere we definitely will, though (two kids would be a whole different equation).
TTC #2: BFP 12/17/11, m/c 1/7/12 and D&C 1/12/12
baby blog/cooking blog
I have something similar--when my dad and stepmom adopted my two sisters, they asked me and DH (who was then only my boyfriend) to be guardians. Technically we still are, should anything happen. Knock wood.
TTC #2: BFP 12/17/11, m/c 1/7/12 and D&C 1/12/12
baby blog/cooking blog
This is a hard decision. We chose DH's sister as first choice and my brother as second choice. In one sense since my brother and his wife don't have kids yet (SIL and her DH have 2 boys), it might be more reasonable to put them first, but my SIL (brother's wife) is not Catholic and has some real issues with the Church and while I respect those issues, I do want my children raised as Catholics, so I feel like that might be challenging. When we made the decision my sister was just out of college and getting established...now that she's married and more settled, I would consider her as an option. My BIL (DH's brother) is definitely NOT an option, though I am sure he would consider himself to be.
DH has three brothers and I have two, but for us this was a complete no-brainer. My oldest brother was the clear choice - steady job, lovely wife, lovely (albeit spoiled) daughter, same values as us, etc. I could definitely poke a lot of holes in their parenting style (see comment about spoiled child) but nobody is perfect.
If he dies, we didn't want his wife to have to do it herself (and she's not "family") so DH's mom is the back up. Of all the grandparents (there are four sets) she is the youngest/most capable/most trustworthy. I wish we could have gone with my parents as the back up, but it made zero sense to burden my parents with three kids - they are 69 and 76 years old.
Keep in mind - my brother and his wife will have our life insurance money to aid them in bringing up our kids - so money doesn't worry me at all - although my brother makes a very nice living.
However, my brother is NOT the trustee of our estate, my dad is. We opted to not have the guardians be the keepers of the inheritance. I love and trust my brother but I wanted to make sure our life insurance $$ goes to the care and feeding of my kids, not to repairing his fishing boat.
So my dad is in charge of my kids' inheritance $ until they are 21. If he dies, then my brother is in charge of the $.
I read this article in Time a while back and just had to share - it's totally true and hilarious.
He totally pinpoints it - I want people exactly like us to raise C! And those people aren't necessarily in our family, it looks like . . .
We've been debating over this for a friggin year since H was born and we still can't come to a decision!
Of all our family, the only ones who could feasibly do it would be my dad and stepmom, but with the age factor I just don't know about it. We thought for a while that my sister and BIL would be a good choice - stable home, 2 incomes, my nephew is only a year older than H. But my sister has done a couple things in the past year that really make me question how much she cares about DH and I and our feelings. The most recent was surrounding H's birthday party so it's all very fresh.
At the moment we are really considering asking a very good friend, but we aren't quite ready to make the ask yet.
Ditto this, I made my dad the keeper of all things money but put in stipulations that they could definitely ask for more money if they needed either for the girls or for their own hardships (I don;t want my kids to suffer if their guardians are having a hard time for some reason and the money is just sitting there). I really think this is where it paid off to have an attorney specializing in this do this for us - I would have had no idea about the options or what other people do.
We are splitting the guardian & godparent roles. For guardians, we are choosing DH's uncle & aunt - although older than us, they're significantly younger than his parents and have a 3yo & 7yo. We love their parenting style and hope our baby will turn out just like their kids! This was the main driving factor of our decision - in our absence, who could raise our baby in a manner that we would feel really good about. As you mentioned with your cousin, they only have one income (she's a SAHM) and are therefore very financially constrained, but DH and I both have pretty good life insurance, so that eliminated finances from the equation.
For godparents, we're choosing very close friends of ours - DH's BFF and business partner, and he's married to one of my closest BFFs. They have a toddler who calls us Titi (Auntie) and Tio (Uncle), are pregnant with their second who's due 2 weeks ahead of us, and we feel they may as well just be family. Since we see eachother in various capacities a couple times a week now (we live 5 min. apart), if DH and I passed away we'd want them to have a big loving & supportive role in our baby's life as a special Auntie & Uncle. We decided against them as guardians because we have some differences on a variety of perspectives.
Good luck!
We gave DH's sister first choice, then my step-brother and his wife (the one with no kids), and then my mom. I trust all of them and would be happy with any of them.
Regarding money, we got life insurance policies that are high enough that the annual interest from the policy is essentially equivalent to mine and DH's respective salaries. That way if we both went, whomever would take our children would not be burdened with additional financial obligations. We also got the high policies so that if only one of us went, the annual interest from the policy would basically provide the other person's salary. If something so horrible happens, I don't want anyone worrying about money.
Also, related to that, we built into our trust that three people would manage the trust (one of my family members, one of DH's family members, and a neutral friend) and be responsible for making high level decisions about investments, allocations, etc. That way, there's no chance that someone could run off to Vegas with the money because three people have to vote.
Also, I just wanted to say good for you for getting this done. My step-brother who is only 41 and in pretty good health just had an unexpected life threatening aneurysm. He only had a 5% chance of survival at the beginning of Dec and fortunately, he made it. However, it was a good reminder to me about why taking care of these things are important because we never know what's going to happen.