How do you set out who has your children should both parents die?

[futurity]

Sorry if this has been done before!

My friend has asked me if me and my DH would have her DS if her and her hubby were to die as she doesn't want her family to have him! We have agreed and she is going to look into how you sort it out.

It has got me thinking about our situation and I would like to ask my brother and his wife to do the same for us. My brother and his wife don't plan to have children but are fantastic Aunt and Uncle. Saying that it is quite awkward to ask him and my Dad suggests finding out the facts involved first so that I can answer any questions he has.

So that is it really...I know a solicitor is the person to see but I just wanted to have an initial idea..if anyone knows how do you go about firstly saying who you would like to raise your children (in your will I assume?) and also how you give them your assets to use in the raising of the children?

argh, this reminds me that we really need to plan for our kids.
I can't think of anyone who I'd want to raise my children

I know..it's hard isn't it. When I asked my Dad how to approach my brother he said "it wasn't something we did in our day!" but appreciated that it needed to be considered.

We have had it put in our wills.

we haven't done this either
Much as it chokes me I thnk my inlaws would be the best as they are fitter than my parents and all my siblings have 2 kids of there own.
But how long they'll be around for I don't know.

I'm just in the process of doing this as part of my will.

Am meeting the solicitor next week to discuss how it would work.

Our solicitor put it all in our wills, along with the details of the trust to provide for DS.

Unless your parents are very young, its not really a great idea to leave the kids in their care as it would leave a problem fairly quickly of them not being able to cope with them. A friend of ours was adopted by his aunt, whilst his brother went to his grandparents. At 32, his brother had therefore lost his parents, and his adoptive parents and is very bitter about it.

does sound like a solicitor job/as part of will thing then doesn't it. That is something we need to sort out anyway so I can approach my brother in that way..saying that we are sorting out will etc.

It's hard as I don't want him to feel obligied or odd about it.

My understanding is that if you both die then they become the responsbility of social services and they decide were they live. You can specify in your will what you would like to happen to them (ie you would like them to live with X) and this will be taken into consideration.

We were advised to make sure that everyone involved knows (ie GPs) to minimise any bad feelings should the worst happen.

With regard to assets, our money will go into trust for the kids until they're 21. Their guardian will be able to withdraw money to look after them - think we specified that it was to be for education. We were told not to consider giving money directly to the guardians as they could take refuse to have the DCs and keep the money (not that they would!!)

(this is how it was explained to me, it could be utter bollocks)

The answer to your question is "with great difficulty" I think!

We have guardians listed in our wills. It isn't legally binding but the judge would take your wishes very seriously and would only over-ride them in an extreme situation. We chose my parents, as they are both in good health and we would hope that as they age, our DDs would age too, and need less running-after-lively-toddler looking after and more mental and emotional welfare looking after, if you see what I mean. Our money will go into a trust that can be used to look after them, and if there's any left they will get it at 24. The trust is looked after by 3 trustees - the trustees don't have to be the same people as the guardians - in fact, my Mum isn't a trustee as we thought that she would find it stressful.

It was pretty easy to ask them, as they knew that we were struggling and had hinted that they would be very happy to step in. Now that we have our DDs and we can see the relationship between DD1 and her GPs, we know that we did the right thing (DD2 is too young yet). The only problem that I've had is that my Mum has told me that she wouldn't want to spend any of the "DDs'" money. I've tried to explain that that's what it's for! Our life insurance is for the expenses necessary to bring them up, not so that the DDs would have a massive windfall!

"struggling to decide" that should say

we have actually just done this. if both me and DH die, we don't want either of our families to raise the kids. We have appointed his best mate and his wife guardians of the kids (his mate is also one of the executors of our will)
We used a family lawyer who sorted everything for us (he is also a friend) so the executors of our wills are: the lawyer, me/my DH (in the event only one of us dies) and DH's best mate. 3 is a good number as it breaks any deadlock were there to be any major issues and i trust all of them to look after interest of children. This is especially important in cases for example if i am survived by my DH and he is temporarily judgement-impaired if he meets some buxom lovely little thing the two other executors will make sure the children and assets are well protected.
But in terms of guardians, we just let his best mate and his wife know. We haven't told either of our families as there is no need, in our view.