How Did You Decide Who Should Take Your Kids If Something Were to Happen to You?

Hi

I had to do this as my dd doesn't see her father. I was advised to get my will done in-case anything happened to me and so the ex and his family couldn't crawl out of the woodwork. My sis & BIL will be my dd's guardians if the worst ever happened. They have 2 kids and one on the way plus they adore my dd and she also has a large extended family on my BIL's side. My Brothers house is hectic plus him and his wife both work full-time with 5 kids and 3 grandkids so they have enough going on. lol It comes down to knowing that my sister would raise my dd how I would want her to be raised and my sisters kids are more like siblings to my dd than cousins. :-)

Congrats to you on being such a good mommy you are preparing this!!!
DH and I had many Looooong talks about this. We looked for the other people's ability to handle the responsibility. Were they young enough to manage it? That left out grandparents. Were we really comfortable with how they would raise our kids. That took out one of my sisters! Did they have the financial resources to handle more kids and properly handle what our kids would be inheriting? Did my kids know them? How comfortable was I that these people would be the right people to support and nurture my kids after the worst possible loss in their lives?

THEN: we had a long sit down chat with the people we chose. We asked them how they felt about it, gave them time to think and talk about it seriously. When they accepted, we put them in the will. My kids now are 9 and 11 and they know who they would go to if something terrible happened to us. I would never burden young kids with that but older kids actually ask! Now they know we already took care of that and while we don't plan on going anywhere, they have a set of adults who love them who will take care of them.

I considered similar values, lifestyles, religious beliefs.
Who would honor my way of raising my son?
Who would spur him to succeed and encourage him when he failed?
Who was dependable?
Who would he be comfortable with?
Who would be a good financial guardian?
Who did he know? What was his relationship with them?
Were these people that I would be close to for ever?

The I asked them. I simply said I was having my will done, and would they be willing to be my son's guardian if I died? I gave them some time to think about it, and let them know if they decided not to, that I completely understood. I was asking them to, potentially, take on a child at any moment at any age.

I do suggest that you set up life insurance in conjunction with your will. You can name a financial guardian that is separate from the physical guardian if you want (that is what I did ). Or set up life insurance to be paid out as an annuity in the event of your death. Something that is in place and helps offset the cost of raising a child. It will help ease the guardians mind to know that they will be able to afford to raise your child.

I completed my will when my son was 1. He is now 15 and knows who his guardians will be if something happens to me and he is happy with my choice. I also have enough life insurance in place to take care of him, help with college etc. because I know my chosen guardians would not be able to afford it.

Remember, you can always change your will later if you want to.

Good Luck
God Bless

Shared vaules (religious, family, rules and so on)
How well they know my kiddo (see them often so the kid knows them)
If they live near-by (might be able to keep child in same school)
Will raise our child with love & care
My relationship with them

We also asked the two if we both passed away if they would willing to raise our child as their own. We did not want to just write down a name, even if a great person/people, and they really do not want to do it.

Our son's godparents get first call at custody of our son if the unthinkable should happen.

What was important to my husband and I were both shared values and circumstance. Our son's godparents are longtime friends of my husband's. (He's known the godfather since the early 80s when they were in Germany in the army together.) We feel they are people who would take good care of our son and encourage him to follow his reasonable pursuits, because this is what they have done with their lives. We feel that they are in an economic situation which would not make our son's presence a hardship upon them. They do not have any other children, so this would not disrupt their family in that sense. They show good judgment and have similar beliefs/values/ideals as my husband and myself. And frankly, the most important thing to me is they are good, loving, great people. They have a circle of friends that adores them and who are also nice people to be around.

This was a hard decision for us. Both my husband and I have siblings, and I have one sister I would hand my son off to without hesitation. If the godparents decide to let family 'keep' him, I would hope it was with her (and we will stipulate that she's our second in line in the will). My father was pretty upset about the news that a family member hadn't been chosen (ego), but I explained pretty clearly that there's our parents' ages and our sibling's obligations to consider.

When we asked the godparents, we waited until our son was born and just told them "we'd like you to consider this, and please sleep on it because we know this is an important question" and then just asked "if anything were to happen to the both of us, we would like you two to be his family"... they were delighted and said yes immediately. It's been great to have them in his life, and in mine as well.

We looked at my closest family & friends (DH is an only child, and his parents aren't capable of handling raising another child, & we both agreed on that 100%).
Our "potential candidates" have kids, and we looked at how they treat their kids, over time:
* Do we like the way they treat their kids?
* Do we like how they discipline them (do they discipline them? In my one brother's case, the answer is no, so that struck them from the list).
* Are they tolerant of other views/openminded people?
* Do they seem like they could handle one more child?
* Do we think they would love our child as their own?
* Are there family politics that need to be considered? (In our case, yes, but they aren't enough to sway our initial feelings).

These questions have helped us to narrow it to 2 families, and we're still trying to decide between them.

One thing to keep in mind: whomever you decide now doesn't have to stay on the list. As your child's needs and passions change, you may want to rethink the choice later, and have it put in your will later. The perfect guardian for your toddler may not be the perfect guardian when your children are 10 and 12 years old. So it's a good idea to revisit it every 2 or 3 years.

Also, you do not need to announce to anyone in your family or among your friends who you picked. You might want to just keep it private between your choice and you/your DH. Do be sure to talk to the people you want to be your kid(s) guardians now, though. And don't be offended if they say no--its a huge responsibility and should only be entered into if they are 100% comfortable with it. So have a 2nd choice, in case your first choice declines the honor/responsibility.

For me, it's a no-brainer, my Mom would raise my kids if something happened to both me and my husband.

But thanks for asking this question because it made me realize the importance of drawing up my will (and my husband's) because it literally just dawned on me that my husband's parents may feel compelled to fight my Mom for our kids if that ever happened.

Ugh... here's to hoping nothing happens, right? In the meantime, being prepared is always a fabulous idea! :)

One thing that we thought about was the health of the people on our list. This quickly shorten our list because some people that we would trust to raise our dd would not have the energy to raise a child due to their health issues. We ask my husbands brother if he would be willing and he was extremely happy we ask him. Everyone on both sides know about our decision and everyone agreed that we picked the right person.

We looked for the family member or friend who was the closest to our personality. We want them to go to someone who would raise them at least sort of like we do, not just values, but attitude and all that.

Hi,

We decided on people who knew our values, would respect our values and take care of our children just like we would. They understand to a T our religeous values, parenting style, what we want our children to learn in life and most of all consistent, unfailing, unconditional love. We wanted stable people who had drama-free lives and who had a huge love of family, friends, and positivity. We took our time seeking out the people meant for our family and we prayed alot about it. When we got our answer, we asked the people we had chosen and gave them time to get back to us on it.

My advice is to take your time, talk to anyone you are considering and find out exactly who they are, their core values and what they would do if faced with this situation.

M

I looked very carefully at the people on my list and their situations. My mom and stepdad are out because they drink and smoke in the house. My dad and stepmom are out because they both work non-stop. My older brother and SIL don't want anymore kids. My little brother and SIl have 5 kids of their own. My sister has 5 kids and one of them is disabled. My husband's family lives across the country, so they're strangers to my kids. We decided that my cousin and her husband are young enough and financially well-off enough to take care of my girls, so that's what we decided!

I'm happy to hear you are constructing a will. My husband and I just completed our will and trust in January and what a relief it has been to know that our children will be cared for by people we chose rather than those assigned by a court.
We chose my sister and husband based on the following: very similar parenting style (their 3 young adult children turned out well), similar religious beliefs and political beliefs, strong loving marriage (they have been married 23 years), my sister is a stay at home mom who is willing to continue that for as long as our children need it, and they have expressed and interest in being guardians of our children should anything happen--guess in short, they really love our children and our children love them.
There's many couples we know who are good parents and financially stable, but only a couple who would really love and care for our kids like we would. Choosing guardians is tough. Glad you are putting a lot of thought into it.

This keeps me up nights with worry, especially since not but a few minutes away from us we just had an E5 tornado go through Joplin and it took so many lives.
What makes me sad is my children would be separated. My oldest son is not biologically my "SO's" so my oldest son would go to his Bio-dad.
My parents say they are too old to take on the responsibility of raising kids.
My sister has her hands full with two special needs children and a third child that is still very young, there is no way I could make her take on the burden of my youngest two.
Honestly I would hope that my best friend would take my two youngest even though she has 4 children of her own, because I trust her like my own sister, she was raised in a large family, and I know she would love my children as her own.
If she was unable to, I have several cousins who would be great care givers to my children as well...I just spend a lot of time Praying that nothing happens to me or my SO!

I cross my fingers and hope not to die.
My daughter now 16, very mature...has to take care of the little guy 6..
Maybe my rich sister in law helps out financially....
Scarry thing I know, my entire family is in Germany, that wouldn't work out and they are weird,nice and funny but not fit to raise my 6 year old, I think.

I hope you're also doing a trust which is even more detailed and comprehensive. We picked someone who we thought would raise our children in a way that was acceptable/similar to us, and who were around our age. We also have 2 additional backups.