*HOW DO YOU CHOOSE A GUARDIAN FOR YOUR CHILDREN?*

[AgathaRose]

DP and i finally had our first whole night away from 2yr old DD yesterday. -Great, but suddenly realised that we hadn't thought properly about what would happen to her if we were both killed in a car crash, so spent half the time talking about it.
There are no obvious aunt/uncle/godparent types we can ask. Grandmothers are great but not so young.
Would love to know how other people have tackled this one...

DH's parents agreed to act as guardians to a cousin's two dds should anything happened to the cousin. They recently admitted that they were terrified when the cousin's health deteriorated and the reality of what might happen hit them. They dreaded the impact that having two extra dependents would have on their own children who were a similar age and all were being teenager-y. The cousin, a single mother as father had died earlier, died when the younger dd turned 20 and DH's parents did offer to have them for Christmas but by that age the dds could made their own plans with friends.

We've still got to make a decision but this has made me rule out appointing guardians who have/might have children within 10 years of ours. Also, I think the absence of a parent would be extra hard on a child if they were living with someone going through exactly the same stage as them but who had a Mummy and Daddy. Too painful.

I completely agree with Ruby Rioja about the life assurance. This is essential - there is no way you should expect guardian's to carry the financial burden of your children along with everything else.

We are seeing a solicitor next week to draw up our wills (at last! been meaning to do it for years).

We are appointing some very good friends of ours to be guardians for our 3, and have good insurance, life cover etc to support them financially. Family were not an option (only have 2 brothers on my side, 1 who lives abroad and 1 who is lovely but young free and single) and mum who I wouldn't trust with a hamster let alone my children. DH only has his ageing parents.

I can see ructions ahead though as my mum already got arsey when I said she wouldn't be guardian. She automatically assumed she would be even though she lives 250 miles away and is not a big feature in the children's lives.

We recently had our fourth child,first daughter baptised and it brought up this subject,not one anyone really wants to discuss but i found close friends and family were almost deciding amongst them selves who would be caring for our kids and what started out as a joke (well to us anyway)seemed to be a real topic for them.The fact that they seem to be arranging it amongst themselves made me want to go STOP we haven't decided yet!

Just wanted to add a thanku to Agatharose, all those questions are exactly what we need to think of when deciding.We have good friends who have a four kiddies themselves,are financially stable, they have a close relationship between them(no divorce seen in future)they are very caring towards our younger 2 children and show an interest when our older 2 come in the room (hey what u been doing ect) they decipline their own children... you get the picture they sound ideal, they even have said they would take our children on but something is still stopping me from making that final decision with them.Maybe it comes down to I just don't want to think of that happening,that we wouldn't be in there for them and maybe also that they are not family though good friends.????We need to do something bout it though as i have a very large family and could see a problems arise if we don't.

As I am an only child, we decided to appoint a good friend known from school days, because she and her DH would bring up DS along similar lines to us, she lives near my parents and they have 3 children, youngest similar age to mine. Also did not want SIL to have him, as her children are adults and she would not bring DS up as I would wish. We also told grandparents so that they know the score (not bit about SIL!)
When I asked friend she said yes without missing a beat, so know I've made the right choice.

Have talked long and hard with dh about this one and still not come to a consensus - so many issues to consider. First choice when dd1 was born would have been dh's sister but since then they have had a big fight and have not spoken to each other for 4 years and have subsequently moved to Scotland - we live in Devon, so I guess they are out! Next choice is my brother and sil who have 2 kids roughly the same age as our 2 and so live locally and chose to the gps. The problem is that dh somewhat irrationally doesn't like said sil so wouldn't want dds to go there! However, we are guardian angels for their kids! This thread has made me realise that I must tackle the issue again as we don't have a will or even life insurance sorted yet!!. Wish me luck!

This has been an absolute nightmare for us. One thing I'd advise is that you should tell whoever you choose initially upfront that if circumstances change and as your dc's get older you might change to someone else and that they shouldn't be offended.

We have a very close friend and her dp who would be perfect but live too far too allow ds easy access to his family and continuity with school or nursery. Instead we finally went with dh's brother and his wife which I'm not really that happy with as they are so different to us.

But there was no other obvious solution and proximity to ds's current life seems so important.

We've got no obvious candidates for DD, apart from my parents who I think are too old to take it on full time. We're thinking of asking some friends, but my parents (IMO irrationally), whilst accepting it shouldn't be them, are also paranoid about being cut out of DD's life. I've been told that I could appoint my parents as trustees so that they would still be involved in major decisions. Does anyone know anything else about this??

We've been advised by our solicitor to appoint trustees, and that you should have an odd number of trustees, so there's a casting vote in case of dissent.

It's a good idea for your childrens' welfare, but makes the whole thing even more off-putting for the (precious few) people you're prepared to approach as potential candidates to be guardian in the first place.

We've been struggling with this one for 4 years.

We thought about this when we were writing our wills. My BIL & wife have grown up children and grandchildren and certainly wouldn't want to take on other children now. DB & SIL have 2 young children and probably wouldn't want another two, and in anycase that would mean taking them away from all their friends/schools etc. As we wrote our wills a long time ago, and realised other potential guardians would depend on their situation at the time, we wrote, with our brothers' agreement, that they and any remaining grandparents would meet to decide what would be the best for the children at that point in time. To place them together, with a family know to us, if at all possible, and not to feel guilty if adoption by strangers seemed like the best option for the children. Horrible horrible thing to have to think about, but you're wise to be thinking about it.

Sorry, haven't read through the thread but thinking about this lately. Was going to approach db and sil who have 3 of their own (1 disabled) but wanted to know what provisions we should make re money as they may have to buy a bigger house etc. Should we leave them a lump sum? Or have some sort of trust with the income going to them? If we carked it the ds would be in clover so to speak.

Also, how many trustees should you have and what decisions would they need to discuss?

We thought about this for ages when I was pg with dd.
Neither DB or BIL are in a position to offer any level of care for a young child. Both sets of parents are fantastic with dd but we felt that it would be too much to expect them to turn their lives up side down - also, how do you chose one over the other?

So we settled on my best friend and her dh. They have 2 dc about the same age as dd and are very loving and caring people.
We are guardians to their dc too.

Both wills are done with the understanding that anyone can change their minds at any time. For example, if DB got married and started a family of his own then we would considered changing our wills to make him guardian. Equally, if my friend decided that it would be too much to take on, then she can back out too - I'd prefer it if she did this rather than decide 6 months after I'd died that she didn't want dd (not that I think she would but ... )

We have made sure that all DD's Grandparents are aware of, and happy with, our choice, so we are fairly confident that there would be no one to contest anything.

We also made my friend executer of my will, along with DB and my friend's DH executer of my DH's will, along with BIL. This gives them different rights of access when the wills are being sorted out.

we chose the people we feel closest to us in parenting styles and commitment, who are very close friends and have children of similar ages.