Do You Have a Safe List for Your Children?

Inspiration comes from interesting places. I was reading a blog post a while back that I thought was just a post by a mother about how she doesn’t like to leave her children with many people, only those on her “safe list.”.  The comment section was filled with other mothers agreeing with this and talking about what their criteria are for someone being on a safe list, and how careful they are about whom their children are left with.

Then my attorney hat went on and I wondered, “how many of these parents have taken the legal steps to name guardians for their children to make sure that their children would never be in the care of someone who is not on their safe list?”  I’m going to guess that the majority had not. I’m going to guess that the majority have not even discussed their safe list with anyone beyond their spouse.  This means that if something were to happen to both parents, there would be no one around to say “this is where they wanted the kids to go if something happened. Here are the guardianship nomination papers. This is under control.”

Do you have a “safe list” in your head – who is safe enough to watch your children, drive your children, have sleepovers with your children?

If you have a safe list, have you taken the legal steps necessary to make sure that only people on your safe list would be legally responsible for your children if something were to happen to you? Have you signed an Emergency Guardianship Proxy? Have you signed a Will nominating guardians? Have you told the people you nominated that you have given them this responsibility? Have you left that information for your babysitter in case you don’t make it home?

Without these protections in place, the Court will have no guidance if they need to appointment guardians for your children. They may even appoint someone who does not meet your criteria as an appropriate guardian, because they appear to be suitable and they stepped forward. Or the court may appoint a family member, because they are family, who does not know your children as well as a friend and whom you would never have selected.

But if you don’t turn your safe list into a legal document, it isn’t going to do anyone any good when it is most needed – when you aren’t there to talk about it.

If you are ready to put a plan in place, click here to think about what options might work for you.

(This post was originally written in November of 2010. The original blog post about the “safe list” was on Damomma.com, but has been archived and is no longer available.)