guardian for child, what to do?

[cockles]

Dp and I need to make wills as we never have. We have no-one we can think of who could take on ds should we both die. What should we put about it? can we nominate someone as a trustee of some kind rather than an actual guardian? What actually happens in these circumstances, does anyone know? would be very grateful for any advice/resources, thanks!

Am going to watch this with interest as DH and I had a very similar conversation last night although thankfully we agree that my family would be best placed should we both shuffle off. Hope someone can help.

Not sure how helpful this is if you don't have anyone you would want to leave your child with if thw worst happened but DH and I have my sister and her H as guardians for our DCs if we weren't alive and if for some reason they wree not in a position to do it (our solicitor asked us to put down a back-up in case circumstances changed for the guardians we chose) we have DH's sister and her H.

Neither of them live locally so if we died then our DCs would have to live away from their familiar surroundings but they wold be with people they love, who love them and who have similar views on how we would want them to be raised.

I don't know about trustees but I do know that you ought to seek advice from your solicitor as otherwise if you died, your DCs's care would have to be sorted out by others and you would probably prefer to know that if it happened, at least you had chosen who would take care of them.

Cockles, I would def speak to a family lawyer. However, it sounds like your issue is working out who can look after your DS, rather than documenting the arrangements you have decided.

How about a 2 pronged approach: 1) name your preferred person, then back-up/s in your will; and 2) take out life assurance policy for £££ to allow that person to pay for full-time carer, buy appropriate house etc.

This assumes that there is someone who you would like to look after your DS, but they don't have the resources.

This is what we did for our DD - named family members (in order of preference and with "if unwilling or unable to" language so nominated person didn't feel forced to look after DD) and then have taken out £££ each in life assurance. That should cover any necessary care/nanny (she is a baby at the mo), education, cost of housing etc for her.