Guardian vs. will executor

amother

Brown

Tue, May 01 2018, 10:44 am

DH started discussing taking care of our will. The reason we have pushed it off so long is we haven't had a very good option for guardian for our children. bh we finally came to an agreement and will be asking DH sister to do it. I would like to make my brother our executor to ensure my family stays part of my children's lives. Also I am nervous my family will be extremely offended as we are much closer with them than with dh family I just don't agree with their parenting decisions most of the time Smile

DH thinks its a bad idea as it will just make things more complicated and we should leave everything in the same family even if its not the same person (ie make his brother executor)
Does anyone have any experience dealing with this one way or the other? Either keeping everything in one family or splitting up responsibilities? Obviously this should all stay hypothetical but it obviously needs to be done still.

amother

Lilac

Tue, May 01 2018, 10:59 am

We have people on both sides listed in different roles. Not necessarily equally. It's more about who's the right one for the role. The guardians are on one side, they're the ones we fell are best suited for that. However, that side of the family is absolutely terrible with money, so we appointed the executor from the other side.

amother

Brown

Tue, May 01 2018, 10:35 pm

I understand their roles. I'm just wondering if I am setting up a recipe for disaster as I'm sure they would have to work together to make sure my children are taken care of.
I will discuss with my lawyer I just wanted to hear other peoples point of view as well

amother

Rose

Tue, May 01 2018, 11:07 pm

amother wrote:

We had an open discussion with the people we named, about accepting the responsibility and also about who they would have to deal with.

Amarante

Wed, May 02 2018, 3:56 am

An executor has a finite legal role - literally that person just handles the estate and once the estate has been distributed, has no further role.

A guardian of a child acts as the parent for that child - I.e. has the right to make legal decisions regarding schools and medical care.

A trustee has an on-going financial relationship when people have set up a trust for their children. The trustee handles the trust in accordance with the terms of the trust and typically would make financial decisions like investments for the trust. Most typically the trust disperses the income of the assets with the corpus distributed to the children at a certain age when they would be deemed to be mature enough to inherit money. During the term the trustee has the power to invade the principal in accordance with the terms of the trust and the trust language generally enables the Trustee to use the principal for things like schooling and medical care.

It is not uncommon for parents to feel one person should be the guardian (I.e. act as the parent in essence) and another person or entity is the one to make financial decisions. You should act in the best interests of your child - who in your family has the closest emotional relationship with your children - who would actually want and has the ability to raise your children as if they were their own. Is that person someone who has financial acumen that you trust?