Do You Have a Will?

We are going to ask my brother and SIL if they will be willing to be guardians. If they say no then I'm in a bit of trouble because basically I feel my parents are too old and have done their duty and my sister is too young and immature. My husbands family are all divorced and totally dysfunctional. I'm fairly confident my brother will agree though.

I read somewhere that disagreements/indecision/agony over picking guardians of children are one of the biggest reasons for people not having a will. And I would agree with this - I'm embarrassed to say that I don't have a will (and I have 3 kids, ages 6, 3, and 1).

My wife and I have tried using will software and every time we got to the section on specifying guardians, that's where we stopped.

I think we are going to end up specifying either her sister/husband or my sister/husband. Our biggest concern is that currently, neither has children, although my sister is expecting. But we don't necessarily want to choose relatives that have several children either.

Then there is the awkwardness of asking someone if they would do it. I'm considering not even asking - just use our judgement and put in a guardian and perhaps an alternate if the first choice declines.

I've also read that you should pick someone other than the guardians to administer the monetary part of the estate. That's another tough decision - with life insurance, etc., our estate would be close to $1 million, and there is no one in either of our families that is very money savvy (even though we are almost all members of the "party of the rich" - when we were kids, we were on food stamps for a while). I'm having a harder time with this decision than with the guardian decision.

Darth, Do you feel getting the software simply to organize details first and also to get "something" in writing rather than the "nothing" we have now, would be an appropriate choice for the immediate?

I don't know if it would be better than nothing, since I don't know your situation and haven't reviewed the software. Sorry to have to hedge like that. I've heard people say before that a holographic will (handwritten) may be better than nothing, but with multiple children from two marriages, I really don't know if it would be more help or not. Simple, do it yourself wills are probably more likely to be challenged.

These are all tough choices but they DO need to be made.

I now realize this like I've never realized it before. I wonder how many of the people that died in the 3 sites of terror didn't have a will. I'll bet a significant number of them, a lot of them had young children too.

We will end up having a fairly large estate as well. Additionally in our situation, my brother has 3 children of his own and they have outgrown their house. There is NO WAY they could accommodate 2 additional kids w/o getting a larger house. Since they don't have the finances to do this, at least at this stage of their lives I feel we would have to be responsible for this also.

I see why we've put this off for so long, there are so many things to consider and everytime you think of something another thing comes up. It's just easier to bury your head in the sand, I don't want to do this any longer. Good Luck.

MKM

There is NO WAY they could accommodate 2 additional kids w/o getting a larger house. Since they don't have the finances to do this, at least at this stage of their lives I feel we would have to be responsible for this also.

I know what you mean. If we decide on my wife's sister and her husband, its a problem because they currently live in an apartment, while we have a 4-br/2.5-ba house on 2+ acres. The obvious answer is to have them use our house, but they may have problems with the increased costs, which would have to be funded from the estate.

That's why I like the idea of appointing a separate person to handle the monetary side. While I don't think they are the kind of people that would squander everything, I'd rather have someone else's eye on things also - but not have things too inflexible.

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