Will writing - provision for bringing up children

djohnst

Having recently become parents we are looking to put in place a simple mirror will with guardianship of our child, and any future children being placed with a trusted relative.

Thinking about the practicalities of this, having two extra children suddenly appear in your household is likely to have a significant financial burden - clothes, food, school equipment, university fees, maybe needing to move to a bigger house sooner rather than later, etc.

Is this a normal consideration to make in a will? I.e. to make provision for some sort of allowance from our estate to go to the guardians of our children for their general upkeep?

oystercatcher

I don't think it is normal but when our three children were small we specified in our will which members of the family we would prefer to take guardianship , having also discussed this with them. We then put in our will that our house was to be left to those guardians so they could move or extend to make space to accommodate three children and use money towards their upbringing.

Fortunately no tragedy happened and the three children are now independent adults.

securityguy

Yes.

The other thing to bear in mind is the impact on the guardians' own children. It's pretty bad if you leave money in your will to fund their education, holidays and ponies if the guardians' children are left living on bread and scrape.

If you trust the guardians to raise your children, leave them a substantial amount of money with wide-ranging discretionary powers, explicitly including raising their own children alongside yours. If you don't trust the guardians to handle the money ethically, why are you appointing them your guardians?

It's the general problem with guardianships, powers of attorney and similar instruments. If you trust the people you're appointing, you don't need to tie them in legal knots. If you feel the need to limit their powers in the letter of appointment (which in reality is often unenforceable anyway, and provides hassle to the honest and little obstruction to the dishonest) then why are you appointing them in the first place?

thriftyemma

I don't know the legal term for it, but there is a part of the will where you can draw up 'notes'. We did this when our children were young. If both of us die, we have said in the will we would like the children to be raised by the appointed guardians. We have also said that the guardians would receive a certain amount of money from the estate, to help raise the children.

Speak to a solicitor who specialises in writing wills. I think a DIY form you can download from the internet won't really cut it in this case. Explain exactly what it is you want, and they will be able to write it down with all the correct legal terms.

Pennywise

When we did it, we set it up so that all our money/assets went to our child in a trust until adulthood, but could be used to support the day to day living costs of the child by the guardian (who we specified in the will). From memory, I think it was called an accumulation and maintenance trust. Basically, trust controlled by the solicitor who has discretion to use funds for the living costs of our child. So the guardians didn't need to spend their own money on looking after our child, they'd just need to negotiate with the solicitor to get a reasonable level of funding out of the trust. I seem to remember the solicitor saying the trust could also be used to pay towards a bigger house for the guardian if required (again controlled by the solicitor). Obviously, only possible if you have sufficient money/assets to leave once you're gone.

Faith177

After my dad died when were very young my mum drew up a will with Guardianship details in it. She had an order of preference so her mum & dad first, then my dads, then my dads brother and wife and then her sister and finally me if I was over 18 as my brother was 4 years younger than me so she wanted to cover that time frame for his last few years before he was an adult.

She spoke to each one before doing it and checked they were happy with the arrangements and what she wanted and they all agreed

The house was paid for when my dad passed but she put in that it could be either sold or the guardians could move in or it could be rented whichever fitted at the time

She also had some life insurance to provide a lump sum for us to get the guardians feet on the floor. There was also a trust provision for each of us

HOWMUCH

When my brother knew he had MND he made me joint guardian in his will with his wife. He knew that I was the one who would help bring his daughter how he would wish.

pigpen

When my uncle died and then a year later his partner their children were in a home for a while and are now with the maternal grandmother.. there is a monthly allowance from the estate but the rest is in trust until the 2 children are adults .. currently 6 and 7.5..

The courts over turned the guardianship wishes of the parents because it would have meant moving the children from Germany to the UK.

Lunar_Eclipse

Yes, it's normal. It all goes into trust, and a portion used to cover their living costs. Anything that remains would go to the children at 18/21/whenever you specify.

Unless the guardians are wealthy and/or you leave an exceptionally large estate, most of the estate will be used to raise the children, should their parents die when they are young.

silvercar

djohnst wrote: »

Is this a normal consideration to make in a will? I.e. to make provision for some sort of allowance from our estate to go to the guardians of our children for their general upkeep?

Yes definitely. We also specified our views on certain potential expenditures eg school trips, private schools, university education etc.

Whereas you may be hoping your children are looked after by family with similar child rearing ideas to yourselves it is not always possible. Same with leaving enough money for their upbringing. If both parents pass away when the children are very young, the parents may not have had much of their own working life and therefore not had an opportunity to accumulate savings and/ or house equity.

Remember also that you can change your views on guardianship as time goes by. When we first had children our parents were young and our siblings were young, free and single, so it made sense to name the grandparents as our intended guardians. A decade later, our siblings had settled down and were starting their own families and the grandparents were ageing, so at some point we moved our intentions to the siblings.

It is important to have discussions before agreeing to be guardians. A family member asked if we would be prepared to take on the role and then specified how they would like us to act if it came to it. (Including moving 200 miles to prevent disruption to their kids lives!) We had to honestly decline on the basis that we would be prepared to take on their children and bring them up like we brought up our own, but couldn't bring them up as they are bringing up their children.

Savvy_Sue

We appointed as guardians people we trusted to make the best decisions for the children, rather than people we expected to raise them. That meant a degree of future proofing: if anything had happened to us after we'd moved 100 miles away from where the guardians lived, they'd have needed to consider whether it was better to leave the boys in their new home area, or move them back to where they were born. Obviously as time went by moving back would become a less obvious choice.