I had an appointment on Friday with my attorney - the good kind of attorney - a trusts & estates lawyer. He's helping DH and I get our proverbial shit together so in case we die or become incapacitated, our little ones will be provided for and will have a home with someone on our guardian list of 10 couples.
One of our main goals of this exercise is to make sure that under no circumstances are DH's parents ever to be granted custody of our children. Long story short, DH and I have no relationship with either of his parents, who are divorced and remarried to some poor schmucks and live miserably ever after on the other side of the country. They have never met our kids, and we doubt that will ever change. To put it mildly, they are scumbags who engage in illegal and unethical stuff. To this day we still get collection calls for them - they are apparently on the lam from creditors, but I digress.
Anyway, it feels good to be putting these plans on paper finally. Now that we have planned for it, it will never happen I'm sure (knock on wood.)
Do you have an exit strategy or any kind of estate plan in case of zombie takeover?
8 comments:
We had one but since things have changed and it's me, not we, I need to update it. I was just telling friends this weekend that it's something I need to do sooner than later. I'm Tate's sole legal guardian and it's irresponsible to not always have his interests planned for just in case. Good for you guys being so proactive. And perhaps I need to switch my planned area of practice - I want to be "a good kind of attorney".
;)
I'm a good kind of attorney! I'm a wills and estates lawyer. Despite that, it took us over a year to get our wills done after we had DS. It's a suprisingly difficult thing to do - imagining a future for your kids where you are not there to take care of them. Makes me weepy thinking about it.
We have some similar issues as you with family. We have chosen close friends as our guardians. I really hope nothing happens because both my family and DH's family will lose their shit if they find out that they weren't selected. I even drafted a long-winded affidavit about why we chose who we chose, to be used as evidence in case any of our families dispute our selection.
@mom2boy - I didn't know you're a law student or thinking about going to law school?! In my mind I have this highly unscientific idea of "good kind" of lawyers who truly help regular people. T&E attys as well as Bankruptcy and Elder Law attorneys are generally high on that list.
@Jac - Hooray for being a 'good kind' of attorney!! I am having trouble picking the trustees (for a very small trust funded with life insurance in case we croak)- the guardians however were surprisingly easy to pick. It just feels good to have it all sorted out. ;) Hope you are feeling well these days and don't feel nauseated.
Our choices are very limited. My entire family (parents, brother and his family)lives on the other side of the world, and hubby is an only child from parents who were both onlies. There is only one couple of friends (hubby's distant relatives) I respect and trust enough to give my kids' custody to if anything should go wrong. They are in their 50s and have grown children and a grandaughter themselves. They are also our kids' god parents.
The times we have spoken about such an event with my MIL( last time me and hubby flew together whithout the kids),she has just assumed she would be the one to bring up the kids. With the help of a nanny or carer, until of course she couldn't mange herself. I think that would be the best plan seeing we share a house with her. At least if the kids couldn't have us anymore they would have someone they love immensely and already know well and trust. They would at least have their old home and so hopefully only slightly inconvenienced by the event!
Oh, but I'm not worried about zombies attacking. My husband has planned for that, and I have the utmost confidence in his planning for the zombie apocalypse. I imagine we'll be one of the few survivors taking in other kids! ;-)
Oh no! I think the zombies ate my first comment! It should come before the one that just posted. Let me try to recreate it:
Good for you guys doing your estate planning! We had a really hard time deciding on guardians. It took us a year after our daughter was born, and we still haven't re-evaluated based on having two kids.
We have lots of great family and friends on both sides. The problem boiled down to the fact that none of them are us. Most of our family does not share the same political and/or religious beliefs that we do. And with our spirited girl, we wanted to be sure to pick guardians who would provide her with the kind of understanding, support and patience that she needs. It wasn't easy.
@paola - "...and so hopefully only slightly inconvenienced by the event!" Bwahaha!
We did our wills about a year after Pumpkin was born. Sitting on my to do list is "sign amendments to wills" to add Petunia to the plan.
We got life insurance set up not long after, and Hubby has long term disability insurance (what we get through work is not sufficient). But we're still working on getting me long term disability insurance. They wouldn't write it while I was pregnant, and now the fact that I had a C section is causing problems. Sigh.
@paola - That's a real benefit of having your MIL live in the same building as you! Your last line made me LOL!
@caramama - Zombies are the absolute perfect analogy for "any unforeseen shit that might hit the fan."
@Cloud - The follow up on insurance stuff is on our to-do list as well. One more thing for you, since I know our girls were born on the same weekend - we finally got DD's H1N1 vaccine part 1 from the local health dept, because the ped's office was out of it, and now that all the media hype about it is over, there is not much demand. I know that vast quantities of the vaccine are expiring unused. I know we could've waited until the official fall flu season, and that H1N1 is going to be part of this year's seasonal flu vaccine, but I have never been satisfied with the timing of things around here. November is too late!
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