If you love and care about your children, you’ll do a will. If you don’t love them, feel free to play roulette with their lives and the lives of your well intentioned family members.
It doesn’t matter that you don’t have much if any money. If you have children, you have a reason to do a will.
You and your spouse can die together. There are plenty of opportunities for this to happen. Usually it doesn’t happen but sometimes a car gets hit head on by an 18 wheeler.
If you and your spouse die, your kids, aside from being devastated will be placed in legal limbo. Legal limbo means some complete stranger will decide who gets to raise your kids.
I’ve met a lot of judges. All of the judges that I’ve met work diligently to “get it” right. But no matter how hard a judge works, she can’t possibly know everything you do about your relatives.
Most of the harm will be done by family members who think they’re acting in the child’s best interest. This may or may not involve your living relatives spending large sums of money to bitterly fight with each other in court.
And if anyone senses that there may be money involved….watch out. Right now, everybody fights over every small amount of money. If the last words you read are “MACK” your estates may have a potentially significant wrongful death claim. Relatives who didn’t care about your children when you were living will suddenly want to parent them.
My point is that you need to decide who will take care of your children in the event something happens to you. You. Not a judge. Not your Aunt. You.
Telling someone who you want to care for you children doesn’t count. Doing a will does.
Naming a guardian is perhaps the last and best gift that you could give to your children and family members.
Love your children enough to name a guardian for them.