November 2012 Moms
sara785
member
Wills & guardianship
sara785
member
Who has a will? DH and I are getting ready to put ours together, and we aren't positive who to choose as guardians. How did you decide?
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Re: Wills & guardianship
We picked based on the following factors.
Able to financially afford to take on our child(ren).
Closely resembled our parenting style.
Able to continue home schooling or ensure the child(ren) ended up in a high quality school.
Willing to expose our child to various religions.
Age appropriate and in good health. (We ruled out our parents pretty quickly based on their age/health)
We have a will, we also have set up a trust for F. The trust would be funded by the proceeds of our life insurance, the sale of our house and DH's business. We chose a different trustee than who his guardian is.
Choosing a guardian was difficult. We quickly agreed that our parents were all out. My sister and her husband would be the obvious choice. But they are financially strapped, live in a totally different part of the country than us, and are very religious. DH's sister is not a particularly desirable choice either.
So, we went with DH's best friend. He isn't married yet, but he has a long term girlfriend that we adore, and they plan to get married and have kids. (I'm keeping a secret for him right now that involves a diamond ring!!! So excited.) The deciding factors for us were that he is someone who adores F and would have his best interests at heart, shares our values, and is in a similar socio-economic & geographic situation as we are.
If DH's sister ever settles down and gets her act together, then we might consider changing over to her.... maybe....
ETA: When we sat down with the friend we chose to be a guardian, we asked him if he would be willing, and framed it like we hadn't decided yet and just wanted to know if it was a possibility. He was very open to it. Which, was great bc he was the only one we could agree on!
We also asked him to promise to do a few things for us, like let him visit our parents a few times a year, go to the Summer camp that DH went to, I asked that he give him the opportunity to learn how to ski. Just things that were important to us to pass on to him even if we can't be there. We wrote this stuff down and put it with our will. We also made sure that he would keep our dog, too.
"A new baby is like the beginning of all things--wonder, hope, a dream of possibilities."
This - we chose Dh's sister, she has two kids and all of the things above, my bro would be OK but he has 3 kids instead of 2...