Who cares for dc if the worst happens

[cecil2090]

Hi, was just looking for some advice, I have no experience with anything like this really.

Me and DH have 2 young children together (6yrs and 7mo) neither of them are christened so no godparents.
If the worst should happen to me and DH, who would automatically get guardianship of DC? I assumed any of the grandparents but just wanted to know how it works?

The reason I ask is that we don't have anything to do with DH's mum and haven't done for the last 10 years. She's an alcoholic and just an all round nasty person. She put DSD at risk when she was looking after her due to alcohol (we had no idea she was caring for her at the time, DSD's mum arranged it)
In the last 10 years she has randomly been sending nasty drunken messages saying I'm a cunt and I've ruined her family (this doesn't bother me at all, I find it laughable) we have kept these messages.
Because of this and many other reasons we don't want her around our DC and my worry is that she'll try and gain guardianship if the worst should happen as it is something she would do just because she can.

Is there anything we can put in place to make sure this doesn't happen?
Thank you in advance xx

Write a will with a letter of wishes.

write a will and name your guardians - just make sure they have agreed

Write a will naming alternate guardians. Set it up properly so that your assets go into trust for the DC and the named guardians can administer the trust for their benefit.

My DSis and DBIL are our named guardians even though all 4 grandparents are alive and present.

My youngest will go to her older sister. If her eldest sister is not alive then my cousin. We have this written in our wills.

We have always had guardians named in our will and trusts set up.

I do still worry about it a little bit because when SIL died, she had been explicit in her will about custody of her DC and it was legally overridden after her death. Her DS was placed with the very people she was trying to avoid. It ended up very messy indeed.

Fortunately for us, everybody knows our wishes and the children are older now so could almost, theoretically, care for themselves.

who overrode her wishes and how?

Social services can when a child is left an orphan.

You need to specify it in a will to prevent them being taken into care. DH and I don't have any siblings so stated my best friend (with her permission) in the event that my parents were too old/incapacitated to take it on

Precisely.

And it did end in a situation where the people awarded guardianship had not pursued it in the child's best interests. A very traumatised little boy who needed the best of care, ended up with that guardianship failing when they effectively gave him up less than a year later.

SS can still override these wishes. However, it does help to have your wishes in a will.

Thank you so much everyone.
I did think about a will but wasn't sure if that worked with guardianship of children.
Sorry if I sound naive, I just have no experience of this.

That would be my worry that somehow she could fight it and be awarded guardianship. However I would hope that the fact she's never seen them, has never even asked to and they have no idea who she is would help there.

My sister would be our first choice, if not then SIL. We'll have a chat with both of them then get this going asap.
This is just something that's been playing on my mind for the last month or so.

Thank you so much for your replies xx

It is unlikely that she could get custody over a blood relative.

have you got life assurance? You need to think how your kids will be provided for in the event of your deaths, and also to specify how that money can be used. So for example my kids will go to my brother. He can use their inheritance to buy a bigger house to house them all, but my kids will have a financial interest in that house.

We were named guardians for a sibling's children- they asked us first, of course. Being without any of our own, we could have managed it easier than other family members. It never came to it in the end, thank goodness, the parents are fine, and the children are now adults, but it's as well to be explicit in a will- talk to a solicitor. And if you have a specific objection to a person as well as a preference for others, I'd get that recorded too. And the reason(s) if the solicitor thought it was advisable.

Make a will and specify a guardian in it. People think wills are all about money. They aren’t. This situation is exactly why everyone should have a will.