Estate Planning For Young Families

By Elizabeth Krivatsy

Parents of young children often postpone estate planning. They’re busy with work and child care and school and after-school activities. Sometimes they’re simply uncomfortable talking about the “worst case” scenario.

The #1 reason parents delay is that they cannot decide on guardians for their child.

Who will rear your child if something happens to both of you? What if you’re a single parent? Like I said, “worst case” scenario. If you have not named a guardian, the court is left to make this choice without your input. If there’s any possibility that family members will disagree about who should take care of your child, the court will have to choose between them.

It is far better to name guardians now. You can easily name someone else later if things change.

So, how do you choose a good guardian? You definitely want to choose someone who is willing, loving, responsible, and, hopefully, already involved in your child’s life. Where will your child live and go to school? Are there other children in the home? What if the guardians live out of state? How will you ensure that your child will continue to see family and friends here?

In your Will, you can nominate successor guardians, in case the primary guardians have divorced or moved out of the country or if they are unable or unwilling to serve. You also can name a trusted family member or friend to advise your guardians about any of your child’s special interests or medical needs.

You may want to create a trust to protect your child from financial predators. The trustee you name will manage your child’s inheritance until a specified age. You can detail exactly how the trust assets should be used, including discretionary distributions for things like international travel, wedding expenses, help with the down payment on a first home, or perhaps a business investment. You can also authorize the trustee to distribute a certain percentage of the trust principal to your child at certain ages, which allows the child to learn how to manage money while still under the guidance and supervision of your chosen trustee.

Be sure to coordinate your beneficiary forms for life insurance and retirement accounts with your Will or trust. You don’t want to name your minor child as a beneficiary of your 401k or IRA or life insurance policy without consulting your financial advisor and your attorney.

You should also sign an Appointment of Short-Term Guardian for your child. This could be your regular babysitter or nearest family member, neighbor, or friend. In an emergency when you are unavailable, your short-term guardian can take your child to the hospital or keep them safe until the permanent guardians can be notified. This is especially important if the permanent guardians live out of state.

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"“The past beats inside me like a second heart.”
― John Banville, The Sea (2005)

My younger brother and I spent summers with my dad's mother and our cousins in East Texas (“God’s Country”). My grandmother, Eula Brent Click, was the youngest of 13 children. She taught school in a one-room schoolhouse in Pennington. Rumor has it that she was quite an independent woman for her time, and she married late.

My grandmother was widowed during the Depression. She raised my father and his two older sisters alone, managed the family farm and business in Lovelady, and worked hard to put her kids through Huntsville State Teachers College.

Miss Eula embodied all of the "old-time" virtues - honesty, thrift, simplicity, plainspokenness. She could size you up over the rim of her coffee cup in an instant - and she could spot a lie a mile off. Steeped in the idiom of the King James Bible, she valued good writing, and she could tell a good story and laughed hardest at a good joke.

To be wasteful was a terrible thing. She made play clothes and sun bonnets for me out of calico chicken-feed sacks. She tended a large garden and raised cows and chickens to feed her extended family. She always washed and reused the tinfoil.

Family and church were the two touchstones of her life. There was always someone extra at the table - an aunt, cousins, a visitor - whether for coffee (boiled and tar-black) or dinner. Baptisms and graduations and weddings and funerals punctuated the years. No matter the occasion, there was always plenty of food and storytelling, both of which are competitive sports in my family.

My grandmother taught Sunday School until she was 90. Almost every week she'd pack a food basket for someone who was ill or having a hard time, and we'd drop it off after church. When she was older, nephews and neighbors and church members stopped in to check on her, carry the mail up from the highway, bring her a meal, or help with things around the house, all of which allowed her to live at home until the last year of her life.

I love hearing people's stories - the experiences of a lifetime that shape us all, one way or another. Estate planning, at least in part, is about sharing our legacies and our precious stories with our children and grandchildren.

A longtime friend asked me to help his friend, Harry, a man in his 60s, whose cancer had returned after many years in remission. Harry had worked in the healthcare industry for many years, and he had no illusions about his prognosis and inevitable death. Over the next few weeks, we talked about what he most feared and most hoped for, and how best to ensure that his wishes would be respected.

Together, we created a detailed Advance Health Care Directive, with specific instructions about his end-of-life care, including provisions for spiritual care. We discussed Harry's choices with his adult children, so everyone understood exactly what Harry wanted and why. We also planned for his eventual mental incapacity, so that his children could take care of his financial and personal affairs. Finally, we prepared a revocable trust and pourover will to simplify how his estate would be handled after his death. As he signed the final documents, Harry told me how relieved he felt to have settled everything so that he could focus on being with his children in what time remained.

A few months later Harry died peacefully at home with his youngest son - which was just what Harry wanted.

Seven years ago, Mr. D asked me to help him with his Will. He had never married, and he wanted to leave everything to his favorite nephew in Southern California. Mr. D had lived for decades in a rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco, where he knew everyone in the building by name. While talking with him about his Will, I learned that he recently had suffered a bad fall and was often dizzy. He was having difficulty carrying groceries up the hill to his building, and he wasn’t eating well. It was clear that he was becoming more and more isolated and forgetful.

When I asked Mr. D if he would like to visit some assisted living facilities, he reluctantly agreed. After seeing several facilities in the City, we headed across the Golden Gate Bridge to Mill Valley. It was love at first sight. He chose an apartment overlooking a garden with a beautiful view of Mt. Tam. Despite some initial complaints, within a few weeks, Mr. D was eating regularly and entertaining new friends with his wonderful stories. He even joined the chorus. He knew everybody (and their children and grandchildren) and everybody knew Mr. D. In this safe and supportive environment, Mr. D thrived.