Do I need a Will if I have kids?
In a word.
ABSOLUTELY.
Your Will is the legal document in which you nominate a trusted person as the legal guardian of your minor child (under 18). This guardianship comes into play in an absolute worst-case-scenario in which both parents of a child are dead. Stranger things have happened - be cautioned against thinking “this will never happen to me”.
One of the big consequences of not having a Will has to do with the legal guardianship of your children. Not having a Will means that you leave all decisions about the care of your kids to the State. If your kids are minors, then this should scare you into action - and not because the State isn’t capable of making these decisions or making them well. If you die without a Will that puts forward a legal guardian, then your wishes obviously won’t come into the equation when the state chooses whose care to place them in. Your kids may end up with someone they don’t know or, worse yet, someone you didn’t want them to go to. Ultimately, the State always tries to make the very best choice regarding the care of children and the decision about guardianship is taken extremely seriously.
Here is an example:
The State might choose your sister as your child’s legal guardian because she’s a good choice on paper… financially stable, healthy, educated, married. However, you and your sister have fundamentally different views on religion and you know that if your daughters ends up with her, that she’ll raise them in a belief system you just can’t get behind. Also, her husband can be pretty sexist and you can’t handle the thought of your daughter growing up under his roof.
The best chance of making sure that your specific hopes and dreams for your kids are carried out is by having a clear, up to date Will in place.
If you’re a parent you need a Will because…
Your kiddies’ guardians are named in your Will. If you die without a Will and without guardianship defined, then the State will choose.
If you have little ones, the reality is that you might die before they’re old enough to manage their inheritance. A Will can insist on your assets being placed into a trust that can limit their access or drip feed their inheritance to them until they’re old enough (read: mature enough!) to have full access. Bottom line - you can protect their interests from beyond the grave.
You can specify how and to what end your assets are allocated to your children. For example, you might have a whack of savings that you’d like put specifically towards their first properties. You can make those wishes known in your Will.
Article adapted from here.