When writing your own will, you need to consider selecting guardians for minor children and fiduciaries (personal Representatives and trustees.)

Selecting Guardians

Choosing guardians for minor children is the hardest decision when writing your own will. In my estate planning law practice, this is where we ask clients to start. Guardians are the people that have physical custody of your minor children and are responsible for making parenting decisions.

In choosing a guardian , you are looking for people that have a similar parenting philosophy to yours. People that will make the same or similar decisions for your children that you would have. No one will do as good of a job as you would raising your children, but you want to get close. You should pick a primary and at least one back up if not two.

Selecting Fiduciaries - Personal Representative(s) and Trustee(s)

The fiduciaries will be handling your financial affairs after your death.

After selecting guardians, we ask clients to look at these people through a financial microscope to determine if they should also be personal representative and trustees of the funds for the children. They should decide if the guardian nominees meet the following three part test.

- Do they understand money? (In other words, is it on their radar and do they pay attention to financial matters. They do not need to be financial experts but they need to have a money awareness.)
- Do they spend their own money wisely or frivolously? and
- Do you TRUST them?

If the answer to each of these three questions is yes, then we recommend naming the same people as both guardians and trustees. This will make the administration easier. If the answer is no or maybe, we suggest different people be nominated as fiduciaries and guardians. When writing your own will if you can answer these two difficult questions, the rest will be easy.