All Things Baker: Trying, Once Again, to be Responsible...

David and I try, but we admittedly fall short of being perfect parents. I know...contrary to popular belief... ;-)

We've been talking about getting a Will and Living Trust drafted for about three years now. We even got as far as meeting with an attorney (two, actually), but never got the whole effort off the ground. It's an incredibly daunting task.

Well, I'm proud to say that *today* we finally went back to the attorney and gave her everything she needs to process a first draft of a will, living trust, and the re-deeding of our house (this process also helped us discover that buying our house before we were married opened up a few legal loopholes. Awesome.) It'll take a few weeks for her to get everything together for her first draft, but heck, after the three years it took D and I to formulate the content of that first draft, two weeks isn't bad.

For those of you who are not experienced with estate planning with minor children, this is why it took us forever to get to this point in hella-serious estate planning. You need to:
* decide WHO should manage your estate (liquidate your assets, invest the proceeds, close accounts, collect your life insurance, deal with your house, deal your cars, deal with your children's new guardian, etc etc etc)
* decide HOW that person is to manage your estate (work with an investment counselor, plan for kids' college, etc)
* decide WHO will raise your children, which is almost as hard as this last biggie...
* decide HOW you want that person to raise your children

So let's say you decide you want Ralph Smith to manage your estate (cash) and Loretta Jones to raise your children. Sounds cut-and-dried, right? But now consider this: if Loretta Smith dies, do you automatically want her husband, Jerome, to raise your kids? Do you want Ralph Smith to have a say in that? Oh, and how much are you going to pay Ralph for managing your crap? And do you want Loretta to send your kids to private school instead of the Jonesville Public School? Who decides if Jonesville Public School is acceptable? Who has to agree before the estate (Ralph) will pony up for private school? Oh, and what if Loretta decides to move to Paraguay? Or worse, Cleveland? Can she take your kids, or does the next-in-line guardian get the kids? And how old/how accomplished do your kids have to be before they can get your cash? 25? 30? 26.5 with a college degree? 27 with a Masters degree? AUGH!

Every single decision opened up Pandora's box a little wider. Crap.

So, realizing that our current plan of just ignoring this whole mess might not be the most responsible decision, we wrote a narrative on what we would generally like to see happen....the pretty essay written in a pleasing font had clear sections describing the things that are important to us and the things that confused us (see Paraguay issue above). Proud of our work, we handed it to the attorney, then watched as she stared first at us, wide-eyed, then at our single-spaced narrative, and asked if we'd really written a narrative on our estate plan. Said she'd never seen that before. Heh. Clearly she needs to get to know D and me better. So, she talked us through her recommendations and agreed to have her draft in the mail in two weeks.

Not easy stuff, no easy answers. I am glad that we at least have the process in gear now.

Anyhoo, here are the princesses we're doing all this for! Check out my pretty-pretties in the Halloween gear: