Parents of minor children: if you and your co-parent died today, who'd get your kids?

In My Humble Opinion
21

When our kids were little, we arranged for them to go to my husband’s brother and his wife, who have one daughter, a fairly large home, and live a couple of hours away. Now that they are older, we’ve changed it up; they would go to my parents. We live in the same city, so their lives would not be as disrupted. The kids are older and wouldn’t take so much energy, and now my parents are retired and would be able and willing to raise them for the relatively few years left before college. And we have life insurance with spouse as primary and the kids as secondary.

We are the designated guardians for my brother’s 3 little girls. How we would actually manage I have no idea! (On a practical level I mean; we would have to move to a larger house.) But we are the best option. We also have that job for the BIL’s kid mentioned above.

22

Their godparent (wife’s best friend). It’s in our will and everything.

23

Thane for reminding me that we need to update our arrangements.

When our child arrived designating my sister was a no-brainer. She had the perfect family, solid upper-middle class, two kids, a devoted husband, lived a couple hours from us. Now her life is quite different. Her kids are grown, her husband turned out to be a cad. Her personality has changed, and not necessarily in a good way.

Meanwhile my brother and his wife, famous bon vivants, have settled down, have a young child, and are great parents who love spending time with our kid. They live across the country, but we have vacationed together a few times.

I’ll be making an appointment with our lawyer today.

24

My wife’s parent’s would get the kids, while my dad would be the executor of the estate. That was recommended by our lawyer, who suggested it’s better not to give one set of people ALL the authority if there’s a disagreement down the line.

I think my dad is the backup if the in-laws die first.

25

My wife’s sister. Everyone in my family is nuts.

26

My kids are no longer minors, but I’ll admit that my wife and I did not have any written agreement as to who would take care of them should we kick the bucket with the same foot (kick the same bucket with one foot each?). Our families were very lucky not to have to deal with our lack of planning.

27

She’s sixteen. I’ve contacted my housing association,and she would be allowed to succeed to my tenancy, so she’d stay here. She couldn’t manage alone, though - most sixteen year olds couldn’t, but she will never be able to live alone due to her autism. My GF (who I only got together with when my daughter was 13, so is not a co-parent) would move in as her carer for a couple of years and then find someone else to do it.

It’s actually better than before she was sixteen because then she would have gone into the care system and lose her home and all her stuff as well as me, and I couldn’t see her coping well with that.

I’m not very well, so this is actually a worry for me, but there just isn’t anyone for her to go to. When she was little there was, and I had it in my will that she should go to them, but they’re not suitable now. At least now there are a couple of people who would step in and help her out in non-parental ways, like applying for benefits, getting bills paid, etc.

I have no life insurance (I can’t afford it due to my health - the premiums I was quoted were far too large) but I have funeral insurance and she’d get a fairly substantial inheritance from elsewhere a few years down the line, plus she’d be entitled to state help to help pay the rent and some of the costs of a carer. She really would need my friends to help her get that help though; otherwise she’d just sit alone indoors in her own filth until she was evicted.

28

Wife’s cousin and his wife. It’s set out in our will, which also puts our assets into a trust for our daughter, which would pay out in 4 installments starting when she is 18, finishing when she is (I think) 40. A bank is the trustee. We are prepared!

29

Currently it is my son’s Godmother, but we need to update our will and make it my sister. Nothing at all against the Godmother, but she lives in Canada and my sister lives an hour away. it would be less of a disruption to life/school for my son, plus my sister’s daughter is almost college-age and they now live in a house, vs a tiny apartment when my son was born.

30

My kids are beyond this stage now but during their childhood my biggest fear was that something would happen to me and they would be with their father forever with no exposure to the other people I tried to surround them with. I had a note in my will (completely non enforceable but still) asking for them to be allowed access to their step father and his family in the event of my death.

Now I am tier two backup for my best friend and her husband. First option is her sister and she would take the kids if she was still alive but should anything happen to her first or at the same time I get to go through the teenage years again :slight_smile:

31

My brother and his wife. We have $300,000 in life insurance, and insurance on our big debts, so they are automatically paid off if we both die, plus I have a small whole life policy, and DH has a burial policy, so most of the $300,000 will be available for the boychik’s care (not to mention SS benefits). Brother lives in Hollywood (works in the film industry), so care of a child won’t be cheap, but my brother manages money very well. If my brother predeceases me for some reason, his wife will still take my son (if she remarries, we will have to revisit it), but my mother, assuming she is alive, will be the trustee for the money. SIL is OK with this, because she was actually in some trouble with debt before she got married, and depends on my brother to take care of their money.

Before my brother was married, one of my cousins was first on the list to get the boychik, but she still had young kids at the time. Now her younger child is in high school, and so we decided that maybe she and her husband are entitled to some time to themselves. But she will be the trustee if SIL happens to take the boychik on her own, and my mother is not around.

Once the boychik turns 16, we will visit the possibility of emancipating him if we both die, so he can stay where he is, and stay in his high school. If we are still in Indianapolis, I will probably have family in Indy, and definitely in a city an hour away, as well as in Chicago, who can check on him, and help him pay his bills every month. It will really depend on what he is like when he is sixteen (and what he wants, of course). He is eight now, and he is a little immature, but he is also very well-behaved. He never gets into trouble for the sake of it, and does what he is asked the first time (well, almost every time). I have known people who, in spite of being top notch students, had to do summer school, or take extra classes during the year (correspondence or online) because they changed high schools after their sophomore year, and the new school had such different requirements, that they couldn’t fulfill them all in two years. And leaving you peer group as a teen can be traumatic by itself; it’s all the more difficult to do when you just lost your parents.