Dads that show up are a special breed. They’re at the games, plays, and concerts; they’re up late rocking the cradle or helping with school projects; and they have considered what will happen if something happens to him.
I thought I had done it right. When my kids were born, I purchased life insurance, wrote a will, and thought I was set.
Boy was I wrong.
Life insurance is an important piece, but it’s only one element in ensuring your family will be okay if you’re not there. And while I write this with the upcoming Father’s Day in mind, this goes for the moms out there, as well.
Dads & moms, when you’re thinking about whether your kids will be okay if something happens to you, a comprehensive estate plan isn’t a “nice to have”; it’s an imperative.
Why the Answer in Your Head Doesn’t Count
I ask this in nearly every planning session I do with families: if something happened to you tonight, who would raise your children?
Most parents have an answer. It lives in their head, maybe in a conversation they had with their partner years ago, maybe in an understanding with a sibling or a close friend. The right people know what they’d want. It’s not a mystery.
Here’s the problem: that answer doesn’t exist in the eyes of the law.
Without a legally named guardian, the decision about who raises your children doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to a judge who has never met your family. That judge will hear competing petitions from people who love your children: grandparents, siblings, close friends, each one certain they are the right choice. The outcome is not guaranteed to match what you would have wanted. And the people you love most are left to fight through a court process during the worst weeks of their lives.
The conflict that can erupt over an unnamed guardianship is entirely preventable.
A conversation isn’t a legal document. If you haven’t named a guardian in writing, you haven’t actually answered the question, which means you haven’t actually protected your family… yet.
The First 72 Hours Nobody Plans For
When they think about guardianship, parents typically consider the long question: who would raise my children through childhood? Almost none of them think about what happens in the first 72 hours after an emergency.
Who has legal authority to pick your children up from school tonight if you were hospitalized? Who can authorize emergency medical care if your child is injured before anyone has had time to call a lawyer? Who can step in immediately,
not after a court hearing,
not after a probate filing,
but right now?
This is the gap I close with families upstream, before the crisis, while we still have time to design around it. Standard legal documents don’t close it. A will names a guardian, but a will only takes effect after your death, and only after it clears probate.
The families I work with leave our planning sessions with a set of documents I create with every family who has minor children, that gives designated caregivers the immediate legal authority to step in if something happens to both parents. Not eventually. Right away.
The bottom line: The guardian question has two parts: who raises your children for the long term, and who is authorized to step in right now. The immediate question, what happens in the first 72 hours, is just as important as the long-term one. Most families haven’t fully answered either, or built a plan that will actually hold up when you need it to.
The Part of the Plan Most Parents Skip
Guardianship is only part of the picture. The other part is what your children actually inherit, and how.
A will passes assets to your children, but without additional planning, those assets are managed by the court until they turn 18. Your designated caregiver has to go and apply for funds necessary to raise your child. Then, at 18, your child receives everything at once. No structure, no guidance, no protection from their own inexperience or from others who may take advantage of it.
Without a trust, your estate goes through probate, a public and potentially lengthy court process that can reduce what actually reaches your family.
The parents who’ve thought this through aren’t just thinking about who gets what. They’re thinking about how the potential guardiance will receive the funds necessary to raise their children, how and when their children receive what they’re given, and whether the structure around that inheritance sets them up or sets them back.
What You Can Do Right Now
A comprehensive and considerate estate plan is how I help families answer that question. I don’t hand my clients one-size-fits-all documents. I take the time to understand your family and your specific situation, then design a plan that actually works when your family needs it to. That includes the immediate protections, named guardians, and and documents that give caregivers legal authority right now, and the longer-term structure of trusts, beneficiary designations, and healthcare directives. The relationship doesn’t end when the documents are signed. When something happens, your family knows to call me.
Father’s Day is a good day to start building that.