It’s a “Big Ask.”
So big, in fact, that many of us don’t do it.
Asking someone to be your child’s guardian in the event of your death is a sticky task that can gum up the works of even well-oiled family finances. How do you bring up the topic? Do you owe them a detailed look at your finances? How do you tell your sister she was passed over for a friend?
All parents face it. Yet, when insurer MetLife Inc. surveyed parents of special-needs children this year, just over half hadn’t named a guardian. And this is a group that probably has thought a lot about care arrangements for their children.
Nadine Vogel, who has daughters with special needs and advises other special-needs families for MetLife, knows how tough it is.
“I remember it vividly,” Vogel said of her conversation nearly 14 years ago with a younger family member shortly after she had a baby, Gretchen, with a neuromuscular disease.
It was difficult, but she asked in person, a move she recommends to all parents.
It’s one thing to ask someone to care for a large number of kids or a child with extra needs, and another to ask them to also shoulder the financial burden.
But parents of even the healthiest and wealthiest children struggle with the question too.
There is more to the equation than adding up monthly child-related expenses and tacking on the latest college-cost estimates to see if your investments and life insurance measure up to the cost of living in the guardian’s city.
Even when a couple has provisions for plenty of money, it’s still a life-altering commitment for the guardians.
Colleen and Jonathan Barney live in an upscale Newport Beach, Calif., neighborhood with their two daughters, ages 10 and 8. The couple–she’s an estate-planning attorney, and he is an entrepreneur–has built a sizable estate that will cover their daughters’ living expenses, but naming their guardian was tough nonetheless, Colleen Barney said.
The couple bypassed siblings and chose close friends.
“First, I called my mom and told her I was thinking about naming a friend,” Colleen said, asking whether it would cause strife among the siblings. “My mom thought it was the best choice, so we wouldn’t have to uproot the kids,” said Colleen, who grew up in Michigan and has no relatives nearby.
Then they went over for a casual dinner at the home of longtime friends Katie and Lowell Anderson.
“I just blurted out to Katie that we were wondering if she and Lowell would be willing to take the girls in case something happened to both of us,” she said.
“Katie was right away OK with it, but I told her to talk it over with Lowell before they gave us an answer. A week later, I went back to her and asked if she’d done it, and they had both agreed.”
The Andersons didn’t ask for a full accounting of the couple’s personal finances or for a copy of their will.
“As a general practice, you don’t really want your personal documents floating around. What if you change your mind or make other revisions to the will? I think you owe someone you’ve asked a general overview of how much of the children’s needs will be taken care of, but you don’t owe them exact numbers,” Colleen said.
Kevin Grant disagrees. The father of seven has asked, and been asked, the guardian question and believes more disclosure is better.
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“You’ve just laid your greatest asset, your kids, at my feet. Aren’t I entitled to know the details?” said Grant, a Ft. Worth financial planner.
Estate-planning attorneys also point out that the guardian is subject to court approval and can be contested, another reason to do all you can to be clear about your wishes.
If you just can’t bring yourself to have these discussions, however, there is another way.
Atlanta attorney George Menden wrote in an e-mail that he revised their guardian appointment several times when their children were small.
“We began hurting the feelings of those we no longer wished to appoint. We recognized that it was unlikely that a nominated guardian would actually serve (the designation is important, but the likelihood of serving is remote). So we simply selected guardians we preferred, wrote a detailed letter of instruction (kept with our estate planning documents), and changed our minds at our pleasure, without hurting the feelings of those we love so much.”
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E-mail Janet Kidd Stewart at [email protected].