How did you choose a guardian for your child in your will? (APs)?

After we adopt, we will obviously need to account for the fact that we now have a child - up our life insurance, set up a trust, life insurance goes into a trust for the child, and choose guardians. But suddenly there is going to be this whole other dimension to our choice for guardians. It's not just a matter of choosing the people who are closest to us and best able to raise our child in the way we would want them raised. We also need to choose someone who will continue to honor our open adoption agreement, who will continue to speak to our child openly about their adoption and recognizes the issues that they may face. (I realize the chances of this happening are slim, but I also believe in being prepared). How did you choose? Can I really say to my brother "Here are the twenty books you need to read?" How do you go about ensuring that they would have all of the information they need to have? Do you think their has ever been an instance where the natural parents were named (contd)
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as guardians in the event of the death of the APs? Looking for real input here, this has my head swimming. My brother and his wife are the closest to us, live two miles away and will be a daily presence in their life. But my best friend is the one who has been doing the reading, discussing the issues, trying to understand all of the things I've been trying to understand and knows of our commitment to an open adoption, ongoing relationship with the birthparents, and belief in honesty with our child. She lives a few hours away and will be a huge presence in their life, as well.

How do I figure this out?

cagney

We took many factors into deciding this.

We looked at our closest members of our family, friends and yes we considered her other mother seriously before coming to a decision. We also included our daughter's other mother and her input and feelings were a major part of our decision.

We choose a close friend of ours. Not only does she already have a relationship with our daughter, but she also has one with our daughter's other mother. Even though it's just from visits and other brief interactions, our daughter's other mother is comfortable with her and likes her very much as a person. She understands our feelings and beliefs on keeping the adoption open, and agrees to uphold this agreement.

We felt like just saying that we wanted whoever we choose to be a guardian for our child should something happen to us was not enough. That it would be too easy for others to not uphold what we think to be a very important part in raising our child. This is why we choose a close friend that also knew our daughter's other mother. We all felt that it would be in the best interest of our child.

abowen11298

I chose my children's guardians based upon the following factors:
how they interacted with my children
how my children interacted with them
willingness to take on lifestyle appropriate to raising young children
I also talked with her in depth about what my wishes for my children are
I ended choosing m y baby sister. When I chose her, she was single. Now she is in a committed relationship with a child of her own and she realizes even more now what a huge commitment she made. Good luck with your choice!!

Gershom

I don't know what your situation is with your child, being in an open adoption and if its possible or not, but maybe you could put his/her surrendering parent/s as the "legal guardians."

kevinsnickle

It was very difficult for me to decide who would be my sons guardian should anything ever happen to me .. )His father has already passed on) . My family and my ex's family do not get along in any way so I had to make a very difficult decision because I really could not leave him with either family as he would be with held from the other family . when all was said and done my best friend of 24 years and her husband will get guardianship of my son and will follow out what ever my wishes are.

BPD Wife

For us, our first concern when setting up a guardian for our son was considering our son's medical disorder and who would be best able to handle that and provide for his special needs.

We chose my brother because of that. We did discuss the adoption but it was my brother who indicated to us that he would do what it took to keep my son's bio grandparents in my son's life. Because we have such a wonderful relationship with our son's bio grandparents, they have become basically an extension of our family. They attend all of our family functions and events so everyone knows them and loves them as much as we do. I trust my brother enough to know that he would do whatever he could to respect my son and any agreements we had in place but I also know that my son's health and well-being would come first above anything, and for my husband & I, that was most important to us.

furfur

My answer would be akin to abowen's and my list was narrowed down to two sets of people. When my hubby and I made our wills, we were asked for a primary and a backup in case the primary died before the will got changed.

I also think if the biological family is involved, it is a good idea to see if they would want to take the parenting duties if you feel that they would be able. Obviously this would not work if the parents were abusive to the children.

Your thought process is absolutley correct in understanding that whoever you choose needs to be able and willing to honor the open adoption agreement and open to learning about adoption and the effects on adoptees. I don't know that I would give them twenty books to read, but I did send two along to our guardians and we used that as a basis for how that applied to my daughter.

It sounds like you have really put alot of thought into this. I wish you the best of luck with your adoption!

Sophie

I have a brother and sister that I've selected in case something ever happened to me. I am single, so it was important for me to do that- even before I started the adoption process.

Good question (*).

sizesmith

Choose who is best for the child. Consider other children in people's lives, would the birth parents maybe be able to have a productive life with the child, if they now had the resources to raise the baby? We were going to appoint the birth parents in our adoption, and had talked it over with them before the baby was born, however, we later found out they have been doing drugs, so we're going to talk it over with our kids and decide (we have a 19 year old and 23 year old). If you're going to leave enough resources for the child to be raised, it might open the doors to someone you didn't think of yet.

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