There's another thread that has got me thinking about guardianship of our DD in case something happened to both of us. I am an only child, DP has a sister, and both sets of parents are probably to old to take on new parenting role long term. Both of us are filled with horror at the idea of our DD living with our nearest relative - his sister but I'm writing this to work through whether our reasons are good enough to express in our wills.
We disagree on almost everything. Most of the time serious topics are avoided to prevent family arguments and we are pleasant in a superficial way, so to an outsider we probably look like we have a good relationship. DP and I have a strong sense of keeping our freedom. This means we are self-employed, have a very modest life so we do not have any debt, and will regularly go off travelling for a few months. We are often criticised by his sister and the rest of our family for this approach. That we should get 9-5 jobs, get ourselves saddled with a mortgage so we can buy a nice house, take loans out and have a fancy car, fancy clothes and fancy holidays. In particular that we are being cruel to our DD by not living like this, we should be more conventional.We quite actively avoid 'princessification' of our DD, so as well as dolls, prams and kitchens, she also has cars, trains and lego. We are keen on both outdoor sports and motorsports and take our DD to these kind of events. We are told that these are not places for a child and especially a girl, she should be in pretty dresses and not getting dirty.
This is probably just background though as to why we don't get on. I think the issue is that his sister has been deliberately nasty to us and that she would continue to be nasty about us if we were dead. My big fear is a) that in death we will be bad mouthed to our DD and our current family history would be destroyed, b) that she would get a kick out of making parenting choices that are the exact opposite of what we would because of spite and c) she would want to mould DD into a mini version of herself. As DD grows older this becomes less of a concern because she won't be able to forget us but she is still very young.
But and this is the real but - his sister does love DD. It is unlikely that she will have her own children and loves the time she spends with our DD.
Does it matter if we are dead? Does it matter that our DD may not have the options available that we would give her? Is it not just easier for DD if she lived with her auntie, who she sees almost weekly when she's at her grandparents? Even if that means she will have less opportunity and will be encouraged to live a superficial life where its important that everything looks right and she needs to bag a man preferably rich who will fund a life of not working.
The alternative is 1 of 3 families we would prefer her to live with. For background 1 is local friends we see once or twice a month, so DD knows them. The others are my school friend and a cousin but we only see them about once a year so there is no real relationship from DD's point of view.
Both me and DP are torn and were discussing this again last night and would welcome some outside views. Some of the comments on the other thread are making me think we should just not mention the issue in our will and let her go live with his sister even though it kills me to do this...
What would you do?