If you are a parent with children under the age of 18 at home, your number-one estate planning priority without question should be selecting and legally documenting both long and short-term guardians for your kids. Guardians are the people legally named to care for your children in the event something happens to you.
And if you’ve named guardians for your children in your will—even with the help of another lawyer—your kids could still be at risk of being taken into the care of strangers.
One of the most disturbing aspects of this situation is that you probably have no idea just how vulnerable your kids are, since this is a blind spot inherent to the estate plan of countless parents around the world. In my experience, even many lawyers aren’t fully aware of this issue—and that’s because most lawyers simply don’t understand what’s necessary for planning and ensuring the well-being and care of minor children.
Why? Well, most estate planning over the years has been primarily focused on the elderly, not on young families. And until my mentor discovered this hole in the estate plan she had created for her own child, no one had given any thought to it.
Fortunately, whether you’ve named guardians for your kids in your will or have yet to take any action at all, you’ve come to the right place. At Soundview Law Group, P.C. we take legal planning for the unique needs of families with minor children seriously, because we are parents of young children ourselves. We have developed a process that ensures you have all of the proper legal safeguards in place to make sure that your kids will always be cared for by the people you would want, in exactly the way you would want, should anything ever happen to you.
A Far Too Common Problem
As you’ll learn here, unless you’ve worked with us to name guardians for your kids, your children could be vulnerable to being taken out of your home and placed in the care of strangers. This might be temporary, while the authorities figure out what to do, or they could even end up being raised to adulthood by someone you’d never choose.
Even if you don’t have any minor children at home, please consider sharing this article with any friends or family who do—it’s that important. While it’s rare for something to happen to both parents of a minor child, it does occur (think about it... do you ever go out to dinner with your spouse and leave the kids at home with a babysitter, what would happen if you didn't make it home?), and the consequences are simply too severe to not take the few simple steps to select and legally name guardians the right way.
Regardless of whether you have accumulated significant wealth or whether you are working two jobs to make ends meet, it’s vital to complete this process immediately, so you know the ones you care about most—your kids—will always be in the care of people you’ve chosen, no matter what.
Soon, we are going to start hosting free workshops for parents to name legal guardians for their kids, so sign up for our Newsletter which will launch in July and and follow us on social media to see when those events will take place. Until then, if you have a group of parents and friends and want to schedule a presentation where we come to you, reach out and lets get something scheduled. And, before we continue with today's topic, if you know you want to start the process of getting your legal & financial life organized and name guardians for your kids so they never end up in the care of strangers, schedule your Family Wealth Planning Session with our office today.
What’s So Complicated About Naming Guardians?
Naming and legally documenting guardians for your kids might seem like a fairly straightforward process, but it entails a number of complexities most people simply do not think about. Even lawyers with decades of experience typically make at least one of six mistakes when naming long-term legal guardians.
If you named legal guardians for your kids in your will—whether on your own using a DIY online document service or with the help of another lawyer—consider each of the following scenarios to see if you have a blind spot in your estate plan that would leave your kids at risk:
Did you name back-up candidates in case your first choice of guardian is unable to serve? If so, how many back-ups did you name?
If you named a married couple to serve and one of them is unavailable due to injury, death, or divorce, what happens then? Would it still be okay if only one of them can serve as your child’s guardian? And does it matter which one it is?
What would happen if you become incapacitated by illness or injury and are unable to care for your kids? You might assume the guardians named in your will would automatically get custody, but that is simply not true and is one of the biggest blind spots we see. A will only goes into effect upon your death and does nothing to protect your kids in the event of your incapacity. Have you created a guardianship plan that goes into affect if you become incapacitated?
Do the guardians you named live far from your home? If so, how long would it take them to make it to your house to pick up your kids: a few hours, a few days, or even a few weeks? Who would care for your kids until those guardians arrive? Did you know that without legally binding arrangements for the immediate care of your children, your kids are likely to be taken into the care of strangers until those named guardians arrive?
Would your care providers even know where to find your will and other legal documents if you didn’t make it home? If not, what would the authorities do while they tried to figure out who should care for your kids?
If you named a family who live nearby as guardians, what happens if they are out of town or otherwise can’t get to your kids right away? Would there be conflict amongst family members who feel they are best positioned to care for the children and would you want to prevent that by providing detailed instructions?
Assuming the guardians you named can immediately get to your home to pick up your kids, do they even know where your will is located? How will they prove they are the people you wanted named as your children’s legal guardians if they can’t find your estate planning documents?
Protection Planning for Kids
These are just a few of the potential complications that can arise when naming legal guardians for your kids, whether in your will or as a stand-alone measure. And if just one of these contingencies were to occur, your children would more than likely be placed into the care of strangers, even if just for a short period of time. If the idea of this is as frightening to you as it was to me when I discovered it, you need protection planning for your children, which is something we include with every estate plan we prepare for families with young children so their kids never have to end up in the care of strangers or someone you would never want raising your kids.
Our protection planning for children provides parents of minor children with a wide array of legal planning tools—including legal documents to name short- and long-term guardians, instructions for those guardians, medical powers of attorney for your minor children, an ID card for your wallet, and much more—to make sure there is never a question about who will take care of your kids if you are in an accident or suffer some other life-threatening incident.
Comprehensive Protection For Those You Love Most
While selecting and naming guardians for your minor children should be at the top of your to-do list, when it comes to estate planning, that’s just the start. Once you’ve named guardians, you should seriously consider putting a variety of other estate planning tools, such as a revocable living trust, in place for your kids. These tools can help ensure that the wealth and assets you want your children to inherit will be passed on in the most effective and beneficial way possible for everyone involved.
If you're ready to learn about doing all of these things at the same time and finding a lawyer who can support and advise your family as your life, the law, and your family situation changes, contact us today at 631-239-1656 or click the button below to schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session.
At Soundview Law Group, P.C., we do not just draft documents; we ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about life and death, for yourself and the people you love. That's why we offer a Family Wealth Planning Session, during which you will get more financially organized than you’ve ever been before and make all the best choices for the people you love. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session and mention this article to find out how to get this $750 session at no charge.
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