Appointing a Legal Guardian - will a letter suffice?

[EdinaMonsoon]

DH and I will be travelling very shortly without youngest DS (17). We wrote a will 11 years ago in which we named our proposed legal guardians. However since then, the relationship we had with those proposed guardians has ceased and in the interim we didn't get around to ever actually changing the will to reflect that.

In these circumstances, would it suffice to write a letter nominating a new legal guardian, to be appointed in the event of our deaths? Including signatures on the same letter from ourselves and our new chosen guardians so that it is clear that all parties consent?

Any guardianship will end automatically when your child is 18.

As you have named guardians in your wills and you no longer want them to act, you need to either write a codicil to change your wills or write new wills.

Thank you @prh47bridge Do we have to attach a copy of the original will to the new version? Or do we simply state that the latest version supercedes any pre-existing wills? We only have a few days to organise so want to get it right. Thanks again.

No, you don't need to attach a copy of the original will to the new version. You just need to say that you revoke all previous wills.

Great. Thank you so much. Very much appreciated.