Orphans, guardianship, and responsibility for your relatives' kids.

In My Humble Opinion
1

No silly fantasy hypothetical today, goodmen & goodwives, and probably no automated poll, though as always I reserve the right to change my mind at the last second and not bother editing this paragraph though it would be trivially easy to do so.

Here’s what’s on my mind. My wife and I had a baby last year. (Well, to be honest she did virtually all the actual work.) As I’m at the tail end of my early forties and have nearly died three times in my life, I have no illusions about being immortal, so we’ve talked about who we’d want to become our daughter’s guardian if we both died at the same time. We’ve four top candidates: my older brother & his wife; my wife’s mother; my baby sister; and my stepdaughter. We’ll decide whom to designate once we have sit-down conversations with all of them and determine who’s willing and who’s best suited.

The above is mostly background rambling, incidentally; I’m not asking for advice, just free-associating. But thinking about this brings a few questions to mind.

First: parents of young children, do you have potential guardians in mind for your kids in the event of your untimely deaths? If no, why not? If yes, have you put it in writing?

Second: how much obligation do you feel to the children of your relatives? That is, if one of your siblings died without designating a guardian for his or her baby/toddler/preteen/teenager, would you be willing to become that child’s guardian? How about a sibling-in-law? First cousin? When does the relationship become too distant for you to feel obligated (assuming you felt obligated in the first place)?

You can wait for the poll if you want, but it’s not coming.

2

We have asked one of my husband’s brothers and his wife. He is the oldest brother, only has one child, who is a couple of years older than ours, he is well off, and he goes to the same church we do, so that is all important to us. My only hesitation is that he is a clinical psychiatrist and full of all sorts of weird ideas about child rearing and discipline, and his parenting style is no where close to ours. But if we were to pass away I guess it doesn’t matter at that point, what matters is having someone we trust to take care of our children. We have yet to make a will to designate him and his wife as our children’s guardians, but when we do get around to it, they are the only possibility. My mom flat out said no :stuck_out_tongue:

I would take care of any of my in-laws or my brother’s children (hypothetically on my brother, he barely dates, let alone makes babies!). Beyond that I do not think we would feel obligated, because all my cousins have plenty of siblings to help out if needed and my husband isn’t close to any of his cousins. I would also take any children my BFF and her husband have in the future if a guardian was needed and none of her family could oblige. I need to tell her as much, so when they make a will she can put us in as possible guardians if her family can’t do it.

3

I essentially was my younger sibling’s guardian for a while, and until they reached their majority, I was their legal appointed guardian if my mother had passed away.

I didn’t particularly want the job, but I felt obligated to them - they are my blood. I have to say I was very relieved when my mother showed no signs of kicking off, and is still in good health with them safely into their 20s.

For relatives or friends, I would say it would partially be a question of - is there anyone else who would be better-placed to be a guardian than me? And partially a question of - how well do I get along with this person temperamentally or care-giverly speaking?

Case in point - I’m phobic of doctors, and one set of my friends has a child with heart problems that will need regular major surgeries at about 3-5 year intervals to keep her alive and thriving. Not a good choice for me to be the guardian, since hospitals and doctors give me anxiety attacks.

On a slightly less extreme side, I have two nieces and a nephew that if I were the guardian of, I would very likely end up snapping or yelling or scolding them pretty much constantly, because they were raised very differently than I was, and they are very alpha-social-butterfly personalities, which isn’t something I deal well with. Again - not a great choice for me as the guardian.

I’m not in both cases, because my family and friends are mostly rational people. However, if the world ended in fire and hail and lightning, and I and my husband were the only options for responsible care-givers, then I would stand willing to be the legal “parent” of *any *child in my family or social group. They are my family, or my friends (my family of choice) and so I owe them that. I’d do my best with them, and try to keep their real parents in mind when I made choices as to how to raise them.

I don’t have my own kids (yet?), but I sure as hell know who I would NOT want to raise them if I kicked it, and a few ideas as to who I would like to have the job if they were willing.

4

We originally named my brother as my daughter’s guardian, but he has since married a pre-school teacher and they became militantly anti-child (don’t ask me how that works), so we changed it to my cousin.

My cousin also asked my wife and I to be guardian for her, as yet, unborn children…from the lawyer’s office…drawing up papers naming us guardians. :smiley:

5

I’m still struggling with the fact that we aren’t going to be able to have children of our own. I would snap up guardianship or adoption of any orphaned or unwanted children in either of our families, quicker than you could say “yes, please”.

So there you go.

6

If my brother and his wife have children and ask me to become their guardian, I’d do it. Familial duty and all that.

7

My sister and I named each other as guardians of our respective children in the case of both parents dying before their majority. It was an easy choice: Both our husbands have no siblings and sis and I have only each other. Fortunately, all the aforementioned children are now adults.

It’s important to put this in writing. Since you now have a child, you should also have a will and this is a good place to put this stipulation.

8

I don’t know. I suppose it would have to be my parents. I’m the oldest by far of all my maternal cousins and I wouldn’t trust my paternal cousins to look after a goldfish. My brother is still a student and doesn’t know what he’s going to do with his life. My fiance’s sister has three kids of her own and his brother can barely take care of himself. His mother is widowed. So I suppose I better pray that my parents stay in good health. :slight_smile:

9

None, really, but the only relatives with children are cousins that are basically strangers. Thankfully they all have siblings that they’re much closer to, so it won’t ever come up.

10

I’ve got a brother and two sisters, and our parents died when I was 5 (and I’m the oldest). My mother had 6 sisters and 3 brothers, but logistically the only solution that worked was my grandparents. My uncles were all still single, so they were out (though the one I’m named for wanted just me). My aunts were all married with kids of their own - 4 or 5 a piece - or still in school. Everyone seemed willing to take one, no one had the resources to add 4 more kids. My grandparents, having had 10 kids with the last just moving out, were retired and had the big house, so raising us together meant living with the cranky old people.

I guarantee that my mother wouldn’t have wanted us raised by her mother - even when I was little, I knew she thought my grandmother had done it all wrong. In fact, the reason we’re all less than a year apart is because she hated how spread out in years she and her siblings are (35 years from oldest to youngest) - she wanted her kids closer in age. Ironically, her siblings sort of treat us like we’re their younger siblings, as they’re used to big gaps in age and we were raised by the same parents as them.

11

My son’s too old to need a guardian now, and my ex and I are, well, ex-y, so it’s unlikely that both of us would be taken out in the same plane crash anymore. If something happens to me, our daughter will go to him, and vice-versa.

If something were to happen to both of us, she’d go to my mother (yes, it’s in writing in our Divorce Decree), and if she’s unwilling/unable, then to my ex’s brother, who is the more functional of his siblings, and if he’s unwilling/unable, then to my son. While I’m sure my son would do his best, I’d hate to saddle a 20 year old with guardianship of his little sister, so that’s why he’s further down on the list.

My ex mother in law and father in law are on the “only if the entire earth is a scorched shell of an apocalyptic wasteland should these people be entrusted with the care of our daughter” list. I’d literally rather see her in foster care; at least there she’d have a shot at not being abused.

I’m not close to anyone else in my family who’s got kids. Like, I’m not even sure what months the kids’ birthdays fall in. So I wouldn’t feel particularly obligated to take them in, but in reality I’m a big ol’ softie, and I wouldn’t turn them away. But I don’t think I’d turn away ANY child who was entrusted to my care, so my relationship with their parent(s) is irrelevant.