S/O Homeschooling and Wills

[Sammish]

Reading the topic about life insurance reminded me of that other super cheery topic - wills. 

 

A couple of years ago DH and I made our wills, and we did something a little odd. If something happens to us, DS would go to our very good friends, S & K. Because of who S is, I would feel completely comfortable with having her homeschool DS. So in our will, we said that if S chooses to homeschool DS, our trust would pay her X amount of dollars each year. It's certainly not what she would make working full time, but the thought was that it would help to offset some of her lost income, and basically make it less of a financial hardship if she chose to stay home and homeschool him.

 

I called S and let her know what we were doing, and explained that she should in no way feel obligated to homeschool him ("it was Sammish's dying wish!"), but that we wanted to make it an option. 

 

Has anyone else ever done anything like this? 

[Guest]

We did.

 

And when our ds went to school school as a high school junior, we changed our wills again so he would live with a family who also attended that school and all his expenses would've covered.

 

Family A was homeschooling family and Family B was trustee for the cash.

Then we swapped the roles.

 

We still need to rewrite them for our latest stage--son has his majority but if we both die, we need to have trustees to dole out the money according to our wishes.

[FaithManor]

We've done similar things. Seasons in life.

 

Our current will, which will be in force until ds graduates a year from this May, is for him to be the ward of an older brother but since his brothers are in college and cannot take over his education and local public schools do not accept homeschool credits, it provides a salary to a dear friend who will help him finish up, do his transcripts, put him through the college app process, ferry him to scholarship competitions, etc. everything he needs to get him to freshman year. Our very trusted nephew is executor and will see that the money goes where it is supposed to go. 

 

We will then need to re-write since he'll be a legal adult. To make sure the younger adults get through college, we'll hold their money in trust until they graduate with annual allowances for living expenses as well as tuition/room/board, and then when they have their diplomas can go to the lawyer and get the rest of it. DD is 26, graduated college, and married mother of one so she will get hers in a lump sum up front.

 

I wish it were not so expensive to have these things done. Everyone needs them. Everyone. Bad things happen when you don't have your ducks in a row and especially so when there are minor children involved. But not everyone can afford them.

[Night Elf]

Unfortunately, no. We did not stipulate a continuation of homeschooling. Who we placed our children with was much more important. The person we chose was my cousin and she's a school teacher. She couldn't have stopped working to homeschool. However, we had 100% trust in her to make sure their transition and experience in school could be as good as possible.

 

Once my oldest dd hit age 21, we changed our wills to give her custody of our other two. We left the finances up to my BIL.

 

They're all adults now, so that's one worry I no longer have. We don't stipulate any certain circumstances in order to inherit. We've talked to them about financial planning and have suggested they go to a financial planner or lawyer to manage their inheritance. What they do with their money is their choice.

[MomatHWTK]

We made arrangements so that if the guardian could and was willing to homeschool it would be financially feasible. We also indicated our preferences for schooling. But I don't expect someone else to be able to hs 4 kids with varying needs. They could hire tutors I suppose. 

[AK_Mom4]

We just went through this last week when we had our wills revised. We have only one minor kid at home (DD15) and we opted to make her adult sibs her guardian. She would undoubtably end up living with DD23 who is a high school teacher and would be fine with DD15 either attending the school where she teaches or finishing up the year with DD23 overseeing the work and then graduating DD15 early. Extra $$$ goes to DD15's guardian while she is a minor to support outside classes or dual enrollment or early community college as appropriate.

 

Like everyone else, I expect to not need the wills, but having this stuff laid out legally and financially just in case made me feel much better.

[SparklyUnicorn]

Nope.  There is nobody who could take our kids.  So there is no point in designating anyone.