Using Guardianships In Your Estate Plan

If you are making an estate plan, your initial thought may be on your stuff—who will get whatever you own, when you are gone. But a good estate plan is about more than just bequeathing your assets and property. It also may be determining who will raise minor children, if you are not able to.

When is a Guardianship Needed?

Of course, if you have a minor child, and parents are divorced, the other parent will, in almost every situation, be the one that raises the minor child.

But there are situations where the other parent can’t or won’t raise the child, or else, situations where both married parents pass away at or around the same time. When that happens, there either may be nobody to raise the minor children, or else, there may be multiple people who want to and who will raise the minors.

Naming a Guardian

In your estate plan, you are entitled to, and should, name a legal guardian who will take care of your minor children in the event that you or the other parent are unable to do so. Of course, if possible, you should leave property or assets to whomever you designate as the guardian, but even if that isn’t possible, and you don’t have significant assets to leave, that shouldn’t stop you from naming a responsible guardian for your children.

You can appoint a guardian over the children, who essentially would be the parent, but you can also leave a guardian over the minor’s estate. This is for situations where you may leave significant assets or property to the minor, but these assets have to be managed, watched over, or used for specific purposes, until the minor becomes an adult.

You can designate the same person or people for both personal guardianship and guardianship over the estate, or you can separate them.

In cases where there are significant assets that may take someone with more financial expertise to manage, you may want to consider one person to be the “parent” guardian of the child, and the other, to be the guardian of the property or estate for the child.

Or, you may want to forego a guardianship over the property entirely, and opt to establish a trust for the child, and name a trustee over the trust (while still naming a guardian to take care of and raise your child).

Courts will almost always comply with your guardianship requests left in your estate plan, unless they conflict with California law, and assuming the chosen guardian actually wants to and is willing to serve—something that you should ideally figure out, before creating your estate plan.

Standalone Guardianships

You can even separate your guardianship from your larger estate plan, called a standalone guardianship or guardianship nomination. This allows you to change the guardian, or appoint temporary guardians (such as if you are going out of the country, or undergoing a medical procedure), without having to redo your entire estate plan.

Your Estate plan is also about your children. Let us help you help them. Call the Torrance probate will and estate attorneys at Samuel Ford Law today.

Sources:

selfhelp.courts.ca.gov/guardianship

sb-court.org/divisions/probate/guardianship-information